tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41349477398774014902015-03-02T00:07:29.518+10:00Kickbike & KettlebellDave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.comBlogger500125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-11270802462985705352015-03-02T00:07:00.000+10:002015-03-02T00:07:29.559+10:00Urine as fertiliser<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.greywateraction.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fstyles%2Flarge%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcorn_0.jpg%3Fitok%3DsN_IZSBf&amp;container=blogger&amp;gadget=a&amp;rewriteMime=image%2F*" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.greywateraction.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fstyles%2Flarge%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcorn_0.jpg%3Fitok%3DsN_IZSBf&amp;container=blogger&amp;gadget=a&amp;rewriteMime=image%2F*" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There's a lot of info available online on the subject of human urine as fertiliser</div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is a good introduction:</div><ul><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.theecologist.org/green_green_living/gardening/605742/urine_the_ultimate_organic_fertiliser.html" target="_blank">Urine: the ultimate organic fertiliser?</a></strong></span></li></ul><div style="text-align: justify;">Aside from the associated water saving -- flushing less -- advantage, there is a scientific case that urine&nbsp;&nbsp;may be the answer to a looming global shortage of phosphorus, a key component in fertilisers.</div><ul><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2007-07-10/aussie-scientist-calls-for-human-urine-fertiliser/95480" target="_blank">Aussie scientist calls for human urine fertiliser</a></strong></span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2012/01/31/3415550.htm" target="_blank">Our ancestors recycled their urine: why shouldn't we?</a></strong></span></li></ul><div style="text-align: justify;">Despite the &nbsp;'yuk' factor, human urine is actually a relatively clean substance. It should be sterile when produced at the body &nbsp;factory. Compared to other sources of &nbsp;manure fertiliser -- cow, horse, sheep, chicken -- it carries much less chance of contamination by pathogens.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Indeed, in-house human urine -- rather than the other solid stuff -- is where most of the good nutrients are at.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The downside is the smell. However, if urine <strong>is diluted and spread</strong> on soil or mulch <strong>within 24 hours</strong> of its production, the odour issue won't register significantly in the process. Although some commercial &nbsp;system do -- the preferred domestic management approach rule should be don't store your urine: use it fresh.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In situations of drought or water restrictions, recycling urine can save a significant amount of water. Even low-flow toilets use approx&nbsp;6 litres&nbsp;&nbsp; per flush (as opposed to&nbsp;13.2 litres for the full) so that a visit to pee on average 5 times per day will use up a daily quotient of 30 litres of water.<br /> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After working as a nurse for many years, especially in geriatric facilities, &nbsp;urine doesn't scare me at all. &nbsp;I also recall the time before sewerage connections were installed in houses and folk relied on outback 'can' toilets and under bed 'potties' -- just like kids' toilet training hardware-- to get them through the night without <em>en suites</em>.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;I've been experimenting. So far so good. While it takes some dedication to collect and distribute human urine -- production is easy -- compared to other exotic gardening activities, like making manure teas and composting, it has its efficacy merits.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Why bother with pee, you ask?&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I think the core advantage with urine harvesting is that it can contribute to your water budget by reducing &nbsp;usage. It won't impact on your water bill much given the way the utilities currently charge, but each week you could be saving 300 litres of drinkable water from being flushed away. Scandinavians &nbsp;are building townships that recycle urine as a form of sustainable sewerage management.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Is the effort &nbsp;worth it for the plants?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hypothetically you'll save on input costs as you won't be importing fertilisers.Aside from the phosphorus advantage, research is very supportive:</div><ul><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://permaculturenews.org/2011/11/27/urine-closing-the-npk-loop/" target="_blank">Urine: Closing the NPK Loop</a></strong></span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/human-urine-is-an-effective-fertilizer/" target="_blank">Scientific American:&nbsp;Gee Whiz: Human Urine Is Shown to Be an Effective Agricultural Fertilizer</a></strong></span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://modernfarmer.com/2014/01/human-pee-proven-fertilizer-future/" target="_blank">Modern Farmer:Can Human Urine Replace Chemical Fertilizers?</a></strong></span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com.au/news/2009/09/090918-urine-ash-fertilizer.html" target="_blank">Human Pee With Ash Is a Natural Fertilizer, Study Says</a></strong></span></li></ul><div style="text-align: justify;">Indeed if you were &nbsp;feeling a bit low on any day &nbsp;and feeling a tad worthless as a human being , you can take heart from the fact that &nbsp;you&nbsp;&nbsp;could supply enough urine to fertilize roughly 6,300 tomato plants a year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There's power in pee!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">THIS POST set off an extensive and very useful discussion <a href="http://brisbanelocalfood.ning.com/forum/topics/urine-as-fertiliser">here on Brisbane Local Food</a>.</span></div>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-60492260708369746842015-02-18T14:17:00.000+10:002015-02-18T14:17:09.391+10:00Broomhood: Straw broom Zen<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/10987389_10153141127963185_880976836360614373_n.jpg?oh=da8ed3f0368473e0c985ee02580149aa&amp;oe=5557B362&amp;__gda__=1431281970_01bff4980b5e85f49e75ff28cacd6a88" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/10987389_10153141127963185_880976836360614373_n.jpg?oh=da8ed3f0368473e0c985ee02580149aa&amp;oe=5557B362&amp;__gda__=1431281970_01bff4980b5e85f49e75ff28cacd6a88" width="150" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Maybe it was because my father used to remind us of his business acumen thus: "I started out sweeping the floor at Reeds"(a Prahran department store) -- that I have a penchant for brooms.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Presentation nuns at primary school first taught me the gentle art of using a single sheet of newspaper to pick up dirt from the floor by sweeping your catch onto it. Nuns were big on sweeping and highly skilled practitioners of the traditional broom arts. Every spick and speck was ferry-ed to the bin every day.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was god's work -- an AMDG thing<i>:Ad maiorem Dei gloriam.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Later, when working as a store man I used to push 'no dust' -- sawdust -- around the underground storeroom of Buckleys and Nunns at the end of each shift, just as I would sweep with water and broad bristle brush strokes, the floor at a meat packing plant a few years later.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Even dead bits of animals were no match for my broom skills.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I've swept community halls and pathways; brushed rugs and ceilings , street gutters and verandas.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Put a broom in my hand and I'm a happy man. I find it my version of Zen(and-the-art-of-sweeping).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But try to hand me a vacuum cleaner and I will vociferously resist...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Brooms are tools conducive to renewal. They are a physical embodiment to the metaphysical and meditative properties contained in the everyday layering of dust, dirt and detritus. An quintessential communing with nature....scraping back to reincarnate the days gone before.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of the brooms, the straw broom is the one most conducive to spiritual fulfilment. Its organic meadow-harvested fibres are adaptive to so many surfaces. On rugs, they are unequal.In time they mould to the users sweeping habits.Brooms become their masters, masters become their broom.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With very frequent use, a trans-substantiation is possible:</div><div style="text-align: justify;">People who spend most of their natural lives sweeping get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their straw broom as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them. In this world the number of people who are nearly half people and half straw broom would amaze you...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In deference to my own habits, let me say that my straw broom and I are merely going about together.</div>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-80945620635346779132015-02-02T07:32:00.002+10:002015-02-02T07:42:15.982+10:00The Garden In February <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-slmjPaJHRF4/VM6Zu1YvyJI/AAAAAAAAIAI/MjaDOS6OoYg/s1600/20150102FebGarden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-slmjPaJHRF4/VM6Zu1YvyJI/AAAAAAAAIAI/MjaDOS6OoYg/s1600/20150102FebGarden.jpg" height="840" width="540" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">After a steady bout of humidity there's been many excuses to green up but with that, the constraints of fungi. Some plants just can't cut the mustard and I've lost plenty to &nbsp;too much wetness.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But what you lose on the swings you make up on the slides....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">More promise than actual harvest the garden has recovered from the dry spell of late last year and has taken off along with its surfeit of weediness. Some plants, like the Russian cucumber has been space greedy but my other cukes have been fungi brutalised.Peppers doing well as are the tubers.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I haven't generated as much shade as I had planned ...yet, but the substance is there in growth mode.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aJoasicxNtE/VM6dlpRV3LI/AAAAAAAAIAU/spl4YIBy4Nk/s1600/%2Bcopy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aJoasicxNtE/VM6dlpRV3LI/AAAAAAAAIAU/spl4YIBy4Nk/s1600/%2Bcopy.jpg" height="640" width="478" /></a></div><br /></div>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-6297304274037081932015-01-29T08:20:00.001+10:002015-01-29T08:20:47.071+10:00Cheap and easy way to make yogurt -- in a rice cooker <div style="text-align: justify;">I've been making my own yogurt for years and have developed my technique with easy DIY in mind.Home made yogurt is so much cheaper than store bought stuff as all you need is milk and a little starter (left over from a previous batch).</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>EQUIPMENT:</strong></div><ul><li style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Cooking thermometer:</strong> make sure you use one with a long stem and easy to read (very large) numbers.</li><li style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Rice cooker with a glass lid:</strong> if you don't have one of these, get a second hand one from an Op shop...and learn to cook your rice on the stovetop using&nbsp;<a href="http://mykoreankitchen.com/2007/05/25/how-to-make-perfect-korean-steamed-rice-step-3-how-to-soak-and-cook-the-rice/" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>the steaming method</strong></span>.</a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://mykoreankitchen.com/2007/05/25/how-to-make-perfect-korean-steamed-rice-step-3-how-to-soak-and-cook-the-rice/" target="_blank"></a><a href="https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2Fs.productreview.com.au%2Fproducts%2Fimages%2Ff2_4e93dc637ec36.jpg&amp;container=blogger&amp;gadget=a&amp;rewriteMime=image%2F*" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2Fs.productreview.com.au%2Fproducts%2Fimages%2Ff2_4e93dc637ec36.jpg&amp;container=blogger&amp;gadget=a&amp;rewriteMime=image%2F*" width="200" /></a></div></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Insulated bag.</strong></li></ul><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>COMBO</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Make sure the steam hole in the rice cooker lid is of a wide enough diameter to allow the insertion of the thermometer stem. (Or that your thermometer arm is narrow enough to pass through the cooker lid eyelet).</div><div style="text-align: justify;">My cooker takes 3 litres of milk...and makes 3 litres of yogurt. It lasts us a week. I used to make larger quantities but fresh yogurt will start to 'go off' after 10-14 days. Best to treat it like milk with a limited shelf life.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>METHOD</strong></div><ul><li style="text-align: justify;">Fill the rice cooker with full cream milk, insert the thermometer through the eyelet hole in the lid and turn on the machine.&nbsp;</li><li style="text-align: justify;">Heat milk to&nbsp;82 degrees Celsius (180F)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.recipetips.com%2Fimages%2Fglossary%2Fm%2Fmeatthermometer.jpg&amp;container=blogger&amp;gadget=a&amp;rewriteMime=image%2F*" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.recipetips.com%2Fimages%2Fglossary%2Fm%2Fmeatthermometer.jpg&amp;container=blogger&amp;gadget=a&amp;rewriteMime=image%2F*" width="200" /></a></div></li></ul><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">There is no need to stir. Just keep checking back to monitor the temperature as it rises.</div></blockquote><ul><li style="text-align: justify;">Turn off rice cooker as soon as the milk warms to &nbsp;82 degrees, remove milk filled bowl, with lid still on and thermometer inserted, and place in an airy spot to cool.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">Allow warmed milk to cool to <strong>43/44 Celsius (110/111F)</strong></li><li style="text-align: justify;">When cooled, spoon in 2 tablespoons of store bought Greek yogurt &nbsp;or yogurt from an earlier batch.No need to stir it in. Just plop.</li></ul><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nonwovenbagsdirect.com.au%2Fimages%2Fnew1%2F14.JPG&amp;container=blogger&amp;gadget=a&amp;rewriteMime=image%2F*" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" class="align-right" src="http://www.nonwovenbagsdirect.com.au/images/new1/14.JPG" height="172" width="156" /></a><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em>Chris' Yogurt</em></span> is good ...so too is <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Dairy Farmers Greek Yogurt</span>. "Pot set" yogurts are all good. So long as you like the taste. What you want is a reliable culture that's still very much alive. You can also add any probiotic strain you may have if you want -- such as from a probiotic supplement (just screw open the capsule).But remember, once you've done one batch, it can be used to inoculate the next. Over time the bug mix will be specific to your kitchen just as sour dough strains are.</div></blockquote><ul><li style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;">Replace the lid, then place the cooled and inoculated milk in an insulted bag.</li></ul><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">I use <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.afreca.org/displaysupplier.php?zSelectedId=sup121274897642814400" target="_blank">'Hot Bags' I got from South Africa</a></strong></span>...but if you wrap up your rice cooker bowl in a beach towel and placed it in an insulated shopping bag you'll get the same effect.</div></blockquote><ul><li style="text-align: justify;">Leave the yogurt to ferment overnight or for 12 hours at least.&nbsp;</li><li style="text-align: justify;">Refrigerate your yogurt in the container you made it in: the rice cooker bowl.&nbsp;</li></ul><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">You can decant your yogurt but it can be a messy and wasteful business. It also fosters contamination.The Easiyo insulated yogurt maker containers you can get in the supermarkets are too tall for easy fridge storage...and the lids aren't secure. A rice cooker bowel fits in my refrigerator OK. I recommend that you store as you cook.</div></blockquote><ul><li style="text-align: justify;">As you come towards the end of each batch, set aside (in a clean glass jar) a couple of tablespoons to inoculate the next.Don't rely on bottom&nbsp;scrapings.</li></ul><div style="text-align: justify;"><em>Bon appetit!</em><br /><em><br /></em><b>The mistakes you can make with yogurt making are straightforward:</b><br /><br /><ul><li>Burning the milk. Some caking on the bottom is OK but don't lift that layer up so that it mixes with the milk above.With the rice cooker method, burning has not been an issue.</li><li>Not keeping to the temperature parameters. Don't add the inoculant above or below the recommended temperature. You'll still get yogurt but much less of it as the ferment will be very milky.</li><li>Ferment times. I ferment for &nbsp;about 12 hours (overnight). The longer you ferment the tarty-er the yogurt flavour</li></ul></div>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-53561478722266255892015-01-16T21:21:00.002+10:002015-01-17T07:50:58.860+10:00Turning the corner...in production mode<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.collectingdoulton.com/ARCHIVE/Havant_tiles/images/Mary-Mary.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.collectingdoulton.com/ARCHIVE/Havant_tiles/images/Mary-Mary.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">'Tis a niggling habit plants have of not doing what you expect them to. You plant with a template in mind -- a projection on how the garden will grow....</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: right;"><i>Mary, Mary, quite contrary,</i></div><div style="text-align: right;"><i>How does your garden grow?</i></div><div style="text-align: right;"><i>With silver bells and cockle shells,</i></div><div style="text-align: right;"><i>And pretty maids all in a row.</i></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">..and the &nbsp;all hell breaks loose! Maybe in temperate climates...maybe in the cooler months here... there's predictability -- but this time of year it's every seed for itself.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"But it's the seasons!" I hear someone shout. Sure. Seasonal is what it is -- but what seasons?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">My inclination is to presume that I have two gardens. A hot and humid one...and a cool and dry habitat. Between the two are x number of months of transition.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So my ruling is that I have two seasons -- each conducive to a different horticulture -- with linking bits.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm not such a grand master of my patch that I can confidently matchmake seed with season any and every time. My head is still caught up in my long ago existence in the temperate zones and I still think like ye olde English cottager.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's a green thumb's dead hand....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But really my &nbsp;greenery kith and kin live elsewhere, leastways this time of year. I've moved north just as in a few months I'll move south again.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of course this is precisely what is happening curtesy of the sun and the axis of the earth. For one part of the year I get to play&nbsp;<i><b><a href="http://www.growitalian.com/about-franchi-seeds/">giardiniere</a>&nbsp;</b></i>and for another I'm in the tropics, caught in a sort of Monsoon mode.<br /><br />Two modes. Two different kitchen gardens. &nbsp;Each requiring a different headspace.<br /><br />Under monocultural precepts this ebb and flow &nbsp;is simply dealt with through engineering and an annual harvest. But the more polycultural your mix the more complex the practice required.<br /><br />For a town not noted historically for its kitchen gardens -- what constitutes the Brisbane garden mix? A choko &nbsp;vine and a mango tree?<br /><br />I'm not saying I can rule on this but I'm thinking it is still an open agenda. We may be constrained by culinary habits and expectations &nbsp;but the disconcerting fact is that we are so located by dint of latitude, that -- either in season A or B -- we could grow almost anything, any annual.<br /><br />In this I'm much &nbsp;taken with<a href="http://jerry-coleby-williams.net/"> <b>Jerry Coleby-Williams</b> </a>habit to divide his garden according to <b><a href="http://jerry-coleby-williams.net/?s=+in+production">production</a>.</b><br /><ul><li>Edible roots</li><li>Edible leaves</li><li>Edible seed</li><li>Edible petals</li><li>Fruit</li><li>Medicinal/spices &nbsp;</li></ul><div>His &nbsp;<b><a href="http://jerry-coleby-williams.net/?s=+in+production">In Production lists</a></b> are always awesome.I think it's a great way top keep ontop of your gardening ways and means because it does keenly measure how productive your patch is at any one time.</div><div><br /></div><div>Jerry Coleby-Williams lists his produce monthly. Here's <b><a href="http://jerry-coleby-williams.net/2014/01/16/in-production-today-17/">his list</a> for</b> last January...so I took his and made up my own. In way of inspiration, the items in &nbsp;green are what I'd like to grow now (if only I'd thought ahead)<br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Underlined are what I've been harvesting this month.</span></span></div><br /><div><b>Edible roots</b></div><div><div>Arrowroot, Canna edulis</div><div>Jerusalem artichoke, Helianthus tuberosus&nbsp;</div><div><u>Potato (sprouting again despite harvest)</u></div><div><span style="color: #38761d;">Radish, Raphanus sativus ‘French Breakfast’</span></div><div><u>Sweet potato</u></div><div><span style="color: #38761d;">Turnip, Brassica rapa ‘Gold Ball’</span></div><div>Yam, Winged, Dioscorea alata</div><div>Yam, African (Discorea)</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Edible leaves</b></div><div><u>Aibika, Abelmoschus manihot</u><br />Aztec Spinach (Huauzontle)</div><div><u>Basil,Thai and Large leaf</u></div><div>Taro</div><div><span style="color: #38761d;">Chinese celery, aka smallage, Apium graveolens</span></div><div><u>Chives, Allium schoenoprasum</u></div><div><u>Dill, Anethum graveolens</u></div><div><div>Egyptian Spinach,Corchorus olitorius</div></div><div><span style="color: #38761d;">Endive, Cichorium endiva ‘Green Bowl’</span></div><div><span style="color: #38761d;">Florence fennel</span></div><div><u>Garlic chives, Allium tuberosum</u></div><div>Amaranth,<br /><span style="color: #38761d;">Japanese parsley, Cryptotaenia japonica</span></div><div><u>Kale</u></div><div><u>Kangkong, Ipomoea aquatica</u></div><div><u>Katuk</u></div><div><u>Lemongrass, Cymbopogon citratus</u></div><div><u>Mint (common garden)</u></div><div><u>Moringa oleifera</u></div><div>Nasturtium, Tropaeolum majus</div><div><u>Parsley, Petroselenium crispum ‘Italian flat-leaved’</u></div><div><u>Pigface</u></div><div><u>Purslane, Wild, Portulaca oleracea</u></div><div><u>Purslane, Golden, Portulaca oleracea var. sativa</u></div><div>Radicchio, Cichorium intybus</div><div><u>Rocket, Wall or wild, Eruca sativa</u><br />Samphire</div><div><u>Sweet potato</u></div><div><u>Vietnamese mint, Persicaria odorata</u></div><div><u>Welsh onion, aka spring onion</u></div><div><u>Warrigal greens, Tetragonia tetragonioides</u></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Edible petals</b></div><div>Rocket, Wall or wild, Eruca sativa</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Edible pods</b></div><div>Madagascar &nbsp;Bean</div><div><u>Snake &nbsp;bean (Red Dragon)</u></div><div>Winged bean (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus),</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Fruit</b></div><div><u>Capsicum</u></div><div><u>Chilli</u></div><div>Choko</div><div><u>Cucumber (Russian, Lebanese...)</u></div><div>Dragon fruit</div><div>Globe Eggplant</div><div>Lemon, &nbsp;‘Meyer’</div><div>Lime, West Indian</div><div>Mouse melon, Melothria scabra<br />Mulberry<br />Okra</div><div>Passionfruit<br />Pawpaw<br />Pepino</div><div>Rosella<br />Tomato, cherry<br /><br /></div><div><b>Medicinal / Spices</b><br />Aloe Vera</div><div>Ginger, Zingiber officinalis &nbsp;</div><div><u>Rosemary</u></div><div>Turmeric, Curcuma longa</div></div></div>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-13187263818971651912015-01-03T23:54:00.000+10:002015-01-04T09:21:45.008+10:00Is it 'safe'? Starch my innards.<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://zoebakes.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/yams-vs-sweetp01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://zoebakes.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/yams-vs-sweetp01.jpg" height="180" width="200" /></a></div>Over most of last year I shifted my diet away from <i>low carbohydrate high fat</i> &nbsp;to<i> lowish carbohydrate high fat + safe starches.</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The notion of 'safe' starch may seem weird unless you have been steeped in low carb Paleo diet lore.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Therein lies a debate...<br /><div style="text-align: right;">...which I don't want to get into.</div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nor am I going to bring you up to speed. You can <a href="https://www.google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&amp;ion=1&amp;espv=2&amp;ie=UTF-8#q=safe+starches&amp;spell=1">Google 'safe starches'</a> yourself.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But I will give you my anecdotal 2 bob's worth:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><ol><li style="text-align: justify;">Much of this Paleo thing misrepresents the eating habits of 'ancestral' peoples -- ye olde hunter gatherers.To presume that 'their' diet was overwhelmingly low carb etcetera is not correct. Traditional diets certainly varied between environments but they were not exclusively as the Paleo-ists argue.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">That said there are some problem foods in the transition out of hunter gatherer-dom -- foods like milk and grains (and more recently -- sugar and vegetable oils). As Vanessa Haynes <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/the-search-for-a-genetic-ancestral-root-for-prostate-cancer/5909854">points out</a>:"The idea behind it is that our DNA profile determines that we should live in that way because for 190,000 years we were hunter gatherers. .... The modern diet, especially in the United States, is not probably the healthiest and probably not in Australia either. So educating children about eating naturally, I have no problem with that. Whether it should be the paleo diet, I think we have to be careful of that because we have had 10,000 years of adaptation to agriculture. Have we adapted to grains? Because the true hunter gatherer can't eat grains either. They have not adapted to drinking milk. But yet most Europeans have adapted to drinking milk. So we've got to take these adaptations into consideration."</li><li style="text-align: justify;">While eating low carb (under 100 grams/day) I found that on those occasions&nbsp;<i>I didn't</i>&nbsp;(ie: ate more) my blood sugar spiked. You may think that's to be expected and while that may be presumed, the fact that the whole insulin response system wasn't being challenged meant that when <i>it was</i> it tended to over-react.So more carbs routinely rather than much less is probably a good thing -- for me anyway.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">Because I was routinely taking blood glucose readings after meals I discovered that I could tolerate some carbs more than others...and the ones I'm tolerating the most are -- that's right -- the ones often referred to as 'safe' starches. I'm a bit touchy with rice but potatoes, sweet potatoes and the like come in under blood sugar budget. That is, so long as I don't pig out.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">So I'm back eating these starches. Potatoes. Sweet potatoes. Yams. Oca (New Zealand Yam). &nbsp;Rice ...and any &nbsp;other, often exotic, starchy vegetable I can find and tolerate. But no bread. No sugar. No wheat. No pasta. No dried legumes. Since I can grow a lot of these veg, I'm on a great culinary and horticultural journey.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">But the trick is in the mix. Starches plus....vinegar or yogurt or fats or pickles or some other acid or oil. No vegetable oils. A few nuts. Any other veg. I don't eat much fruit -- more from habit rather than preference.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">And it's all good. I have more energy. I put on weight initially but now it is coming off. My gut is happier and my gastronomical universe has expanded.I'm eating about 400-500 grams of &nbsp;these starches each day.My menu planning is easier and I've learnt to respect the nutritional value of these starchy foods -- not so much white rice, but the tubers are nutritionally rich.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">I eat other veg of course -- especially colourful root vegetables, cucurbits, greens and herbs -- and meat (mainly lamb as it's my passion), fish and eggs. Steamed or boiled chicken. A little bit of pork.&nbsp;</li><li style="text-align: justify;">Blood sugars: doing fine. Occasionally pass my target threshold of 6.7 mmol one hour after meals but well within acceptable frequencies for a person with Type II Diabetes.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">So all good...and I love these starches! It's like I've broken a fast. When you move away from a dependence on wheat flours and corn ... and base your meals on these other starches the menu is very different.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">My regret is that I've drifted some way from my preferred Arab and Mediterranean culinary preferences as I'm now locating my menu hunting in the great tuber growing cultures of the world. But there are adaptions. The Koreans, for instance, make an awesome noodle out of sweet potato starch --&nbsp;<i>dangmyeon.</i> And then there is the big wide world of rice noodles....</li><li style="text-align: justify;">You can do a lot with tubers....</li><li style="text-align: justify;">I don't drink much pure milk -- except a dash in tea -- but yogurt I indulge in.Yogurt is the primary solution to 'adapting' to milk...that and cheeses.&nbsp;</li></ol>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-90004727369408822462014-12-25T01:45:00.001+10:002014-12-25T01:45:16.438+10:00Vegetative processes outside of my control<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.islandbreath.org/2010Year/10/101009threesisters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.islandbreath.org/2010Year/10/101009threesisters.jpg" height="260" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I think my patch of vegetative nutrition has turned the corner and any reason I may have had for a Xmas suicide has passed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I've got my garden back.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I've had to put my <b><i>market </i></b>gardening on hold &nbsp;and did not run a local stall this month at the community markets. The scheduled date was a few days after the November 27th Storm Cells butchered Brisbane and lacerated my own garden.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was humbled by nature....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Chastised and with lessons learnt, the rejig I've planted is surviving and it even looks like Summer may be kinder -- to plants -- than expected. As a consequence I've turned sharply away from a preference for generic 'vegetables' and embraced plants that suit my growing conditions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">'My' growing conditions mean what I'm up against NOW -- this week, this day -- &nbsp;as the garden' s meteorological and Edaphological conditions &nbsp;changes over time. </div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">NEW WORD:<b><u>Edaphology </u></b>(from Greek ἔδαφος, edaphos, "ground", and -λογία, -logia) is one of two main divisions of soil science, the other being pedology. Edaphology is concerned with the influence of soils on living things, particularly plants. The term is also applied to the study of how soil influences humankind's use of land for plant growth as well as man's overall use of the land.</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">The business of remaking the garden was hard work and very intensive.I spent hours -- day in day out -- making paper pots and sowing seeds. &nbsp;I felt like a god shaping life. &nbsp;And when I planted out I had to deal with the loss of some of my seedlings as the temperature roared up.</div><h3 style="text-align: justify;">Shade up.</h3><div style="text-align: justify;">While I had begun to mulch the beds again -- after getting resupplied with the mowed stuff -- it became very clear that the extended day lengths was too much direct sun for many species I'd planted. The temperate climate gardening books miss this key sub trop gardening factor: shade rules. Indeed, it is disconcerting how early the shade imperative kicks in.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With record annual and monthly average temperatures under Climate Change protocols &nbsp;the suffering at your feet is hard to bear. I have a shade plan -- but that rests on my frangipani forest, and these darlings haven't as yet got to a &nbsp;height where their shadows can be relied upon.So I've had to make do. Be very opportunistic.&nbsp;</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">NOTE TO SELF: Shade early rather than late.</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">I've become obsessed with the arc of the sun in the sky as I calculate how much of sunshine falls directly on any square metre of garden. This time of year the sun beats down from the south east, east, north, west and south west....for 13 hot hours. I don't go out in the heat of the day so you have to sympathise with the plants who have no options.The soil warms up. Stresses increase....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And a little bit of shade can do wonders.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So them's the magnificent obsessions of these gardening times : heat and shade. (And I thought it was really only about water and rain!)&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm sure there's a trick to it. I've planted out vines and sunflowers to assist me in my quest. In the past I've relied on choko vines for shading but this year chokoes have not thrived where I have planted them. I used to drown in choko -- my garden was chock full of chokoes... I even celebrated their crusade:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_an12GMovQo/UMCs_5HLT8I/AAAAAAAAGQo/A5ol0MHRLrE/s1600/Punch20121206.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_an12GMovQo/UMCs_5HLT8I/AAAAAAAAGQo/A5ol0MHRLrE/s1600/Punch20121206.jpg" height="400" width="550" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Click on image for enlarged view.</b></span></div><br />But this year's growing conditions have sabotaged the narrative.<br /><br />In similar mode, I guess I'm impatient with what actually is growing. "When can I start harvesting?" &nbsp;I say to myself.<br /><br />It's like watching a pot boil....<br /><br />It's not so much about having a feed but yearning for an affirmation that you're doing it right. Waiting. Waiting. The irony being that now that I'm mulched up and there's water in the tank, there's the frustration that there is less gardening to do. It's sort of out-of-my-hands...I'm being held hostage to vegetative processes beyond my control.<br /><br />Grow dammit!<br /><br />I guess it's an ego thing.<br /><h3>Three Sisters Companion Planting</h3>I don't grow corn (because I don't eat it) and my beans, this time of year, are tropical varieties ... but the more I contemplate<a href="http://islandbreath.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/indigenous-farming-methods.html"> <b><u>The Three Sisters</u></b></a> method of companion planting the more &nbsp;relevant it seems to what I do. It's not so much the species -- corn+beans+squash -- but the tier-ing, the hierarchy.Interplanting of understory and overstory crops is a traditional gardening method, that was even pursued by the <b><a href="http://islandbreath.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/hortocultural-traditions.html">ancient Romans</a>...</b><br /><b><br /></b>The task is to adapt it to my situation. &nbsp;When you start viewing your garden beds &nbsp;from soil to &nbsp;2 metres up -- your own height approximately -- it's &nbsp;a novel exercise. It's like filling a picture with plants.<br /><br />While I'm using frangipanis &nbsp;as my 'tree' overstory my main objection &nbsp;to food forest gardening is that it isn't flexible enough.I want to rule the amount of shade that falls on the understory during any months of the year. I don't want to be victimised by trees. So food foresting isn't the same as 'Three Sisters' gardening -- which I like to refer to as:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><b>Understory/overstory cropping<br /> ...</b>is companion planting ruled by height designed to harvest or shade sunshine where the understory also serves as a living mulch.</blockquote>It may seem simple to say that, but go outback and try to practice it. If you are relying on annuals (as I do) the subtle and complex interplay &nbsp;of plant height and plant roots &nbsp;is a sharp learning curve. Traditional cottage gardens rely on temperate species to develop the layering, but when you move away from Europe &nbsp;the interplay isn't self evident. The options &nbsp;may be &nbsp;explored in Permaculture literature --but there they are usually reliant on perennial plants to establish 'overstory'.<br /><br />What I'm saying is that you can learn a lot from sunflowers....and from your mistakes. Some overstory/middlestory plants like tomatoes will throw too much shade for most of the year. Indeed it's not just the plant -- its height and growth habit -- &nbsp;but also how close it is planted one t'other that can determine effective layering. Then there is the time of year: how much shade you need when. Some months you don't want any. Other months you want &nbsp;a lot.<br /><br />I'm only saying this as a statement of principle...because I'm still learning. But you get my drift? The polyculture I'm trying to pursue is over and under...</div>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-87098279425200985652014-12-12T14:08:00.000+10:002014-12-12T14:08:05.308+10:00Recovery <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z0bDAi6OOoY/VIppqA8rs6I/AAAAAAAAH3k/HVE6_Z8nRms/s1600/20141212Garden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z0bDAi6OOoY/VIppqA8rs6I/AAAAAAAAH3k/HVE6_Z8nRms/s1600/20141212Garden.jpg" height="640" width="450" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Finally we are getting decent rain....albeit with a price tag.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">My garden was devastated by the October/November heat &nbsp;and lack of moisture and little mulch to be had. So I started replanting and rejigging. Changing the plan.Engineering for the heat and the dry.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Unfortunately, last week's storm cells hit us hard and my seedlings were shredded by golf ball sized hail.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So the rain does come at a price...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What survived &nbsp;and what I've planted since is beginning to add promise to &nbsp;the rejig.I'm looking at the garden from 2 metres down to the soil and across the beds as a sort of complete entity, rather than just looking at the soil.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Planted out are&nbsp;<b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachyrhizus_erosus">jicama</a>, </b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winged_bean"><b>winged</b> </a>and snake beans; more chokoes and strategically located Arrowroot, Indian shot (<i>Indica</i>) Cannas and sunflowers for &nbsp;Summer shade (and a mulch resource). And everywhere I've planted pigface cuttings -- mainly &nbsp;<i>Carpobrotus glaucescens</i> (Eastern Pigface) -- but also the southern variety,&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpobrotus_rossii" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; line-height: 19.8545551300049px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;">Carpobrotus rossii</a><i style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.8545551300049px; text-align: justify;">,</i>&nbsp;as well as&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portulaca_oleracea" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.8545551300049px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;"><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.8545551300049px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;">Purslane</b><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.8545551300049px; text-align: justify;">,&nbsp;</span></span><i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.8545551300049px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;">Portulaca oleracea</i></a>. They're my ground cover living mulch. Leastways that's the plan: a carpet &nbsp;of succulents.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So shade above via climbers, &nbsp;and succulents below, with mulch and shade &nbsp;serving stuff in between. In sync, my frangipanis have come back to life -- so I'm hoping they grow fast over the period of hot weather to come.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the mix I've tripled my <a href="http://edibleplantproject.org/katuk/"><b>Katuk</b></a> plantings with hedges of the bushes running every which way in the shadier spots. You can never have too much <i>Katuk.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My cucumbers are coming on -- now occupying my mounds which grew such a great crop of spuds this year. I'm hoping the &nbsp;contour won't require me to trellis them.In the mnix: anew plat out of zuchinis.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In a succession of 'containers' the </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipomoea_aquatica" style="font-family: inherit;">KangKong</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;is growing well -- just so long as I hand remove an infestation of </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subcoccinella_vigintiquatuorpunctata" style="font-family: inherit;">24 spot ladybirds</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;almost daily. And my&nbsp;</span>Jerusalem<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;artichokes are doing fine: spreading&nbsp;out and now more than a metre tall.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Also 'contained': I planted out sweet potato in an old bathtub after it was clear that I couldn't keep the water up to the plants in &nbsp;garden beds.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I suspect there are more spuds to harvest but I didn't mark all the spots where &nbsp;I&nbsp;</span>originally<span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;planted&nbsp;seed potatoes so I'm still discovering nuggets &nbsp;in the earth.I'm also growing a 'yam', that has taken off in several spots -- but I've forgotten its species. That's a surprise for later.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Of the standard veg fare what's growing is limited to chilli peppers --both hot and sweet -- rocket, basils, the parsleys are surviving, and chicories. Still delightfully confident in their growth are my forests of curly leaf kale.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Like the Purslane, I'm finding that the edible hibiscus -- <i><a href="https://www.greenharvest.com.au/Plants/Information/Aibika.html">Aibika</a></i> -- is easily struck from cuttings and , as far as my stomach is concerned, is a tasty little number.So there's another plant that I'm planning to spread around a lot by parking it in the beds.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">the garden still looks dreary -- as though it has suffered -- the pain shows.But give it time...</div>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-72886077644419030682014-12-03T13:57:00.004+10:002014-12-03T13:59:45.845+10:00My gardening year in review: the first annual PolyVegg Garden Awards<div style="text-align: justify;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OxrcTpgBHVY/VH6HSlrGpxI/AAAAAAAAH0c/UZFxeTXUnAM/s1600/pifgace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OxrcTpgBHVY/VH6HSlrGpxI/AAAAAAAAH0c/UZFxeTXUnAM/s1600/pifgace.jpg" height="325" width="500" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Carpobrotus glaucescens</i> (Eastern Pigface)</td></tr></tbody></table>First up I gotta say that this year I got myself a garden. Like some toddler struggling to walk for the first time, this year my garden became a garden that had ecology on its side.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There were worms in the dirt. Green things grew. Some even took off.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So this year was the year of the <b>greens.</b></div><h3 style="text-align: justify;"><b>Best Green of the Year &nbsp;Award, 2014</b></h3><div style="text-align: justify;">Much as I appreciate the capacity for Kale to play the celebrity and be a popular market stall standard (green smoothies indeed!), this year the prize for best green goes to <b>Warrigal Greens.</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">While I love eating Warrigal Greens and find them very&nbsp;versatile&nbsp;in a spinach and silver&nbsp;beet sort of culinary way, they also grow ever so well in my all-the-way-down sandy -- beach nearby -- soil. It's manna from heaven. Easy care with a garden bed rambling habit.</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">Possible New Years resolution: write the <i>Warrigal Green Cook Book</i>....</div></blockquote><h3 style="text-align: justify;">Stunner of the Year Award: Sunflowers</h3><div style="text-align: justify;">There's no competition here: <b>Sunflowers</b>. Sunflowers took my garden skywards &nbsp; to shine on high like Alice's Wonderland. They made the veg patch mesmerising to look at. They cast shade and glorified the dirt.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hereafter, my garden is going to be a living, shimmering sea of yellow dedicated to Van Goth's missing ear.I'll just keep throwing sunflower seeds, of as many kinds a I can find, at it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mind you, harvesting the seeds ahead of the Sulphur Crested Cockatoos is a hard ask. How do they do it? How do they know that <i>a la carte</i> parrot food is on the table?</div><h3 style="text-align: justify;">Surprise of the Year: Potatoes</h3><div style="text-align: justify;">I've seldom grown spuds before but this year I became enamoured with South Pacific mound gardening practices and planted out some seed spuds...in some serious looking mounds. It was a little late in the planting norm to do so, but within two months I &nbsp;got myself a feed and I've been harvesting delicious 'new' potatoes ever since.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What an abundance! No other crop has been so giving for the space and lack of attention. So here at the PolyVegg backyard garden, the every day spud is also the tuber of the year.</div><h3 style="text-align: justify;">Greatest Disappointment of the Year: Sweet Potatoes</h3><div style="text-align: justify;">After growing a &nbsp;4 metre long patch of sweet potatoes for a year, when I came to harvest, I got not one edible sized &nbsp;tuber.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Not one!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I had harvested leaves for stir fries and such -- but underneath: zilch.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Aside from the sandy soil issue, the aetiology no doubt rests with the drought. Sweet potatoes need more water than I was able to give them. Obviously a<i> lot</i> more water/ a lot more love.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I will persist because last year was good -- OK at least -- in the tuber business underneath. And I do like sweet potatoes.</div><h3 style="text-align: justify;">Fruit of <strike>thy Loins</strike> the Year</h3><div style="text-align: justify;">This is definitely the year of the succulent. Ye olde standard dry weather plant and the sort of tucker &nbsp;we may have to all get used to in a hotter, dryer &nbsp;region. Despite my growing conditions, indeed, because of them, I found I could cultivate Dragon Fruit. Most other fruits -- aside from citrus, passionfruit &nbsp;and mulberries -- suffer in my soil because there ain't much down there to root for. I may be fig hopeful, but in the meantime it's nice to know that the Dragon Fruit cactus feels at home enough to produce.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So succulents rule...</div><h3 style="text-align: justify;">Discovering of the Year in Review: Pigface</h3><div style="text-align: justify;">The humble beach strewn pigface is a surprising plant. As a ground cover it takes off wherever I embed any hacked off cutting.It then grows and <span style="font-size: large;">grows and GROWS....!</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A carpet of succulent greenery with flowers on offer. It's a torturous jungle with stems overreaching each other to go places. The irony is that in its reach out activities, it seldom drops roots and even these are shallow and loosely anchored. Invasive you could not call it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's a benign occupation.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was watching my pigface ramble all about as I played God and snipped bits off to transplant when it struck me that pigface was sure to be my best of all possible living mulches. It is so easy to contain and control it. Just break off bits here and there between your fingers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So in the garden beds this is the plan: <i>wall to wall pigface.</i> And get this:</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">Pigface can be chopped up with a spade and dug into the ground. This works sort of like water storage crystals and reduces hydrophobia (water repellency) in sandy soils. </div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Talk about all my Christmases coming at once! What a great 'dig-in' mulch option!</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The other great thing about pigface is that the southern native pigface, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpobrotus_rossii" style="font-style: italic;">Carpobrotus rossii</a><i>, </i>is, like Warrigal Greens, a&nbsp;potentially&nbsp;popular bush tucker ingredient. It often goes by the indigenous name,<i>&nbsp;</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #141412; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"><i>Karkalla</i>.&nbsp;</span>Snowy River Station is shipping loads of the leaves by plane each week to the Netherlands! The market term is 'Beach Banana' and it fetches upwards of $50 per kilogram!.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;I'm not yet enamoured with the taste when raw, but the fruits are really tasty.</div><h3 style="text-align: justify;">Looking towards the year ahead:tasks and perspectives, hopes and possibilities</h3><div><div style="text-align: justify;">This succulency has turned my head from a ready reliance on standard annuals and in celebrating the the engorged leaf plants, my attention has been drawn to two novel possibilities: Samphire and Purslane.</div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://kickbike.blogspot.com.au/search?q=samphire%5C"><b>Samphire</b></a>&nbsp;may not thrive or even grow this far north...as the preferred edible species is Rock Samphire, <i>Crithmum maritimum,</i>&nbsp;whose ancestral home is the British Isles. But I'm trying to grow it.</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">There are similar 'samphires' in Australia but I've yet to explore the botanics.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm more hopeful with my embrace of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portulaca_oleracea"><b>Purslane</b>,&nbsp;<i>Portulaca oleracea</i></a><i> </i>&nbsp;which is a feature of Turkish cuisine --and I love to cook Turkish. The Portulacas thrive in my garden usually in weed form. When they have a mind to, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portulaca_grandiflora"><b>Sun Jewels</b> <i>Portulaca grandiflora</i></a> take off . So I'm planting out Purslane, like the Pigface, as a ground cover which is also very edible.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I &nbsp;have many other experiments in train -- all with exotic names, most arfe not common in our menu -- but they are for now, only working hypotheses. It remains to be seen if they thrive in my conditions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What will grow is Katuk &nbsp;-- last year's star veg and garden winner. My ongoing passion is to turn my space into a Katuk forest -- hedges &nbsp;of the stuff every which way.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Such an option is in train...but for now I'm imagining a very different garden to the one that occupied my mind's eye a year ago.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><br />Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-16116787213642758082014-11-26T18:26:00.001+10:002014-11-26T18:26:31.755+10:00The shock of the heat. The bitterness of the dry.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-f_RDumXiUKY/VHVGLnOG8jI/AAAAAAAAHzk/hKdJQ-_fSHU/s1600/20141126Summer%2BDrought%2BGarden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-f_RDumXiUKY/VHVGLnOG8jI/AAAAAAAAHzk/hKdJQ-_fSHU/s1600/20141126Summer%2BDrought%2BGarden.jpg" height="640" width="373" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Two months ago I thought I had a great garden.Productive.Verdant. Fecund with flowers and produce. I thought I'd solved so many gardening challenges.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So it seemed....</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">More fool me.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the mix, underneath, my polycultural veneer was gasping for moisture and when the rains failed to come as they usually do this time of year,as they had not the months before, &nbsp;death stalked the beds.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As Frederick Engels <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/ecology/diamat_ecology.htm">pointed out</a>:</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">“Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each victory nature takes its revenge on us…"</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">So I've been busying trying to rejig my horticulture -- trying to generate a new template that can work within my all too obvious limitations.<br /><br />Trying to recover my pride.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is why<a href="http://foodtank.com/news/2013/09/food-tank-book-of-the-week-growing-food-in-a-hotter-drier-land-by-gary-paul"> in some circles</a> there is a push to shift agricultural practices to more sustainable habits in response to quickening Climate Change. Permaculture deals with this challenge through design protocols and by &nbsp;relying on perennials rather than shallow rooted annuals.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;For my part, I suspect any &nbsp;solution is all about context...and maybe time-of-year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's the real estate adage: Location. Location. Location. Where you're at. Where the sun is at. Where each plant lives.</div><h3 style="text-align: justify;">What is to be done?</h3><div style="text-align: justify;">I considered my options...What I want is a harvest through Summer -- a Summer that &nbsp;is promising to be very hot and very dry.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So I've decided to focus on some primary plantings:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ul><li><b>Katuk</b> (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauropus_androgynus">S<i>auropus androgynus</i></a>): Now that I've worked out how to strike Katuk from cuttings, I'd gladly live off this tree vegetable every day.So long as I keep these bushes in as much shade as I can throw, they are sure to reward me. So outback I'm planting a Katuk forest.</li><li><b>Rock Samphire</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;<i>(<a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crithmum_maritimum" title="Crithmum maritimum">Crithmum maritimum</a></i>): A seaside plant that 'should' survive in my coastal conditions despite the weather.If it takes to my patch,I'm planning to make it my No #2 garden preference after Katuk. Samphire is a<a href="http://kickbike.blogspot.com.au/2014/09/samphire-groweth-in-scepterd-isles.html"> novel vegetable enjoying a major culinary comeback</a> such that it currently sells for $70/kgm! I can corner the local market! "Only Samphire stall in cooee!" Become a player in Samphire futures. I have two small plants from which I'll take cuttings &nbsp;and <i>one</i> seedling I grew from seed.Potted up for now...I'm really looking forward to the time they go local...and I make my first million by cornering the market.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Pigface</b>&nbsp; (</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpobrotus"><i>Carpobrotus</i></a>): This I can grow! Sold -- and even exported --<a href="http://tasteaustralia.biz/bushfood/pig-face/"> as Beach Banana or <i>Karkalla </i>Beach Succulant </a>&nbsp;--&nbsp;my major interest was deploying this benign plant as a garden tool. I grow <i><a href="http://www.anbg.gov.au/gnp/interns-2005/carpobrotus-glaucescens.html">Carpobrotus glaucescens</a> </i>&nbsp;-- the native Angular Pigface -- whereas the marketed variety is&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpobrotus_rossii"><i>Carpobrotus rossii</i></a>&nbsp;-- native to WA and southern Australia. I'm not a fan of &nbsp;the astringent taste of what I grow. In the meantime, I've decided to use its keen spread as a living mulch. Coat the beds with Pigface and I'm protecting the underneath.It's easy to control and lightly rooted so planting other veg among the succulent leaves is easy.</li><li><b>Warrigal Greens (</b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetragonia_tetragonioides"><i>Tetragonia tetragonioides</i></a>): Bingo! Another easy grow. Does really well in my &nbsp;sandy soils. My plants have died down this weather and maybe are seasonal in &nbsp;habit but I'm hoping to &nbsp;utilise it more aggressively through the cooler months as a ground covering mulch. As a veg, I love it. The point being that as I run out of mulch each year I can fall back on Pigface and Warrigal Greens as an in-house living carpet for whatever else I plant.</li><li><b>Kankong</b> (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipomoea_aquatica"><i>Ipomoea aquatica</i></a>): AKA&nbsp;<i>Water</i> spinach... which suggests it needs water -- so that's seemingly a contradiction given my theme. But Kangkong is easy to &nbsp;grow in containers &nbsp;so long as you keep the soil moist. I grow it in part shade over Summer as much as I can. As cut-and-come-again greens go, I don't think I've found it's equal. As long as the weather is hot, and you keep it hydrated, Kankong delivers. Easy to divide and transplant too. One Kankong goes a looooong way</li><li><b>The Climbing Army</b>: Now that I have a ready <a href="http://kickbike.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/in-bamboo-grove.html">supply of bamboo canes</a>, I can move my garden skyward in double quick time. Snake Beans, Choko vines, New Guinea Bean, Jicama, Climbing Yams and Winged Bean have all been booked on the the bamboo pole express. Accompanying the skyward push are Giant Sunflowers. My scheduling is a bit off as I should have engineered this elevation earlier but I've obviously been suffering from naiveté.</li><li><b>Purslane</b> (<i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portulaca_oleracea">Portulaca oleracea</a></i>) : Not that there's anything wrong with Sun Jewels (<a href="http://berniesgarden.blogspot.com.au/2010/02/portulaca-grandiflora-sun-jewels.html"><i>Portulaca grandiflora</i></a>), the<i> oleracea</i>&nbsp;option is tastier.It also grows well in a dry gardenscape. Purslane is<a href="http://chocolateandzucchini.com/ingredients-fine-foods/45-things-to-do-with-purslane/"> culinarily &nbsp;versatile</a>&nbsp;and &nbsp;an active participant in the garden bed. Maybe it can match the pigface family as a cover?</li></ul><div>That's the main game. Then there are my experimental indulgences:</div><ul><li><b>Cucumbers:</b> I love cucumbers! Is there anything as tasty as a sun ripened warm cucumber? Is there!? I get the English obsession with these delights...and cucumber sandwiches...and pickles..and the yogurt thing:&nbsp;<span style="text-align: start;"><i>Tzatziki</i> or <i>Cacik</i>.</span>&nbsp; My Zucchinis were OK this last year&nbsp;so I'm hoping that the cukes will come on. Water demanding of course, but I plant them close to my terracotta pot watering stations and indulge them with mulch so they get the irrigated on a hot day and hang onto it.I'm growing 5 species. So it's me vs the possums.</li><li><b>Queensland Arrowroot (<i><a href="http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/2686/#b">Canna edulis</a></i>)&nbsp;and Indian Canna (<i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canna_indica">Canna Indica</a>)</i></b>: Sure you can eat the Qld arrowroot root but these tall plants -- and their shorter 'Indian' cousin -- are booked for supplying me with harvestable mulch.I harvest my lemon grass &nbsp;for mulch but this year my lemon grasses have fagged out because of the relentless dry. So you canna do better than canna...(such is my proposition).</li></ul><div>This year I have delighted in a great potato crop.The productiveness of what I planted only a few short months ago has been thrilling. Despite low levels of irrigation I am amazed at what I've been able to harvest.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Spuds rule!</div><div><br /></div><div>On the other hand, my sweet potato crop has been very absolutely disappointing. Sweet potatoes &nbsp;require water you see, and that ain't been there. I guess I'll need to work more on making better soil -- and irrigation -- before I can rely on sweet potatoes again...<br /><br />In the meantime: other tubers get planted.<br /><br />We live and learn as nature takes its revenge.</div></div><br />Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-70658319902551243862014-11-24T20:02:00.001+10:002014-11-24T20:02:14.173+10:00In the bamboo grove<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xdZQp5L3B74/VHL6ZjRHB_I/AAAAAAAAHzE/KZ77hT51yDE/s1600/20141124bamboo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xdZQp5L3B74/VHL6ZjRHB_I/AAAAAAAAHzE/KZ77hT51yDE/s1600/20141124bamboo.jpg" height="640" width="449" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">On a hot day there are a lot worse places to be than within a bamboo grove.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">You can bring your Zen songbook and chill out.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I recommend such visits if your locale is short on meditative space. &nbsp;My personal preference is a grove of Sheoaks as you get more wind ambience<i> through them.&nbsp;</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The whispering...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But then my bamboo visit today was about harvest.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A feral stand of running bamboo accompanies my local railway line and I've been visiting this noxious weed space over the past 5 years in order to harvest canes for odd jobs. This species is not the best quality cane to be had from &nbsp;these grasses, but I can &nbsp;still get 18 months out of a harvested bundle.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Bean poles. Trellising. I also use it for canoe masts and curtain cranes.</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">Canes as cranes....</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Given that I have a range of Summer time legumes, choko and yam vines on the go, I'm planning to take my garden skywards on bamboo lifts.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;Since I live on sand which doesn't hold a pole vertical too well I've learnt that the trick with bamboo 'uprights' in the garden is to first ram in a metal pole -- like the 1 metre long segment rods you get for tents -- and lash the bamboo cane to that.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I get a supply of these metal things from my local tip. Totally recyclable in a way that wood is not in the garden.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Works a treat. Just ram the bamboo cane into the soil a little bit -- then lash -- and that way you get less rotting at the stem edge.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After a short time in the grove, I came home with 20 canes.</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">HARVEST with a pruning saw. TRIM with secateurs. CUT to standard lengths.BUNDLE with ropes. TRANSIT on top of the car.&nbsp;</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">The more I have/the more uses I seem to find for the canes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Happy fella.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ommmm....</div>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-73557843524985817962014-11-08T19:13:00.000+10:002014-11-08T19:13:18.744+10:00Mulch me! We grow and kill stuff only to learn.<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i1.cpcache.com/product_zoom/751624084/mulch_me_la_tshirt_bib.jpg?height=250&amp;width=250&amp;padToSquare=true" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i1.cpcache.com/product_zoom/751624084/mulch_me_la_tshirt_bib.jpg?height=250&amp;width=250&amp;padToSquare=true" /></a></div>Keen as I was to aggressively advance my gardening options I had to go interstate for a week and while away...</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: right;"><i>while away... [boo hoo]...my garden was devastated!</i></div></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><banner><b>October 2014</b>: 7th highest temperature and 9th lowest rainfall on record in conditions of already declared drought.</banner></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">My labour intense garden suffered big time.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">While we are STILL in drought &nbsp;-- the dry conditions had destroyed my usual supply of mulch.No grass clippings have been dumped on my nature strip for months.If it wasn't for my large Silky Oak dropping its leaves on the garden beds during September, my soil would have been &nbsp;naked and even more exposed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In a twice it happened. I went from great garden to daggy garden in just one &nbsp;week as all the nasty factors kicked in to sabotage my green thumb arrogance.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Fortunately, I had &nbsp;asked that my seed trays be watered while I was away...so I had another generation to plant after the beds dried out and crisped up.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So with hindsight -- and 2 weeks on is hindsight enough -- let's explore the problem of my dead plants. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>My major mistake </b>was not to have mulched up.I knew I was running dangerously low on mulch &nbsp;but I failed to seek other resources to carpet the beds. I do rely on a lot of cut grass -- if only to build up soil from sand -- but from June to November &nbsp;the supply dries up -- coinciding with the driest period of each year. Reason: the grass does not grow.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>My solution:</u></b> I'll need to grow and harvest my own mulch supply &nbsp;while sourcing other materials to supplement. In the two weeks since my return I've been &nbsp;trimming bushes and trees, and mixing the cuttings with torn up soak newspapers/junk mail/cardboard to make my mulch go further. I had used lemongrass as mulch in the past but these have also suffered during the dought.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>My shade failure</b>: The early onset of hot weather also exposed my plants to a lot of unrelenting &nbsp;sunshine. I do have a shade program based on the growing of Frangipanis...and tall sunflowers. But the Frangipanis aren't tall enough yet and have not as yet fully sprouted leaves. So they're useless this early in the heat. While I'm loving the 2.5 metre high sunflowers -- I didn't &nbsp;grow enough of thse to really shade the area I needed to shade.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>My solution:</u></b> I need an ongoing &nbsp;Sunflower program with plants ready to plant out as seedlings through most of the year. That &nbsp;cut Sunflowers are so easy to grow and make great mulch is another plus. That they also serve as bean poles -- makes them even more useful...Then there are the flowers of course. (And yes I have planted Jerusalem artichokes as well --so I guess I need to think : sunflower <i>and artichoke</i> family.)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>My seed and seedling mistakes:</b> this year I had experimented more with direct sowing of seeds and my results have not been so good.My soil is still too sandy.I've also tended to plant my seedlings regardless of conditions pending.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><u><br /></u></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>My solution:&nbsp;</u></b>I now prefer to sow seeds in flats and transplant. But even &nbsp;there &nbsp;I find I have a better chance of success if I pot up most of my seedlings and plant them out when they are more vigorous and the weather conditions are more opportune. This puts me in greater control. I just wait until &nbsp;the situation is preferable, then I plant the &nbsp;seedling in the garden bed. I can do this because I'm now using paper pots I roll myself and planting out is a simple business of burying the pot -- plant and all. Potting up like this also gives me greater control over my polycultural options. I can plant a thriving plant next to &nbsp;another thriving plant I target with companionship in mind.Potting up also means I have an extended planting window. Given that I'm now resource chunkier mulches , my little buried paper pots seem to survive quite well in all the detritus.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>My foolish watering habits:</b>I survived the dry Winter by hand watering the garden. This works fine when its cool but when the temperatures rise it's an indulgence.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><u>My solution:</u>&nbsp; </b>I think I wasted a lot water<b>.</b>Yes, despite my low use of it.&nbsp;Instead of far too frequently &nbsp;hand watering the garden I should have filled up my terracotta irrigation pots more &nbsp;often so that their water level staid high. As it was I was filling them up only when they emptied -- and in doing that I was undermining the gravity dynamic that irrigated &nbsp;the garden beds. These pots really do work &nbsp;but in our conditions they need a good mulch covering of surrounding soil and a better top-up regime.<br /><br />So there:<i> Mea culpa. </i>We grow and kill stuff only to learn.</div><br />Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-11034164132786430852014-10-07T01:48:00.001+10:002014-10-07T01:48:45.998+10:00Poly Plus Plus Polyculture<a href="http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100315135913/aliceinwonderland/images/thumb/d/d7/53flowers.jpg/250px-53flowers.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;" target="_blank"><img class="align-left" src="http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100315135913/aliceinwonderland/images/thumb/d/d7/53flowers.jpg/250px-53flowers.jpg" height="320" width="270" /></a><br /><div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The garden is awesome!</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Being Spring and warming up fast, the take-off is&nbsp;accelerating as more plants start doing their stuff.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A botanical explosion from the ground up.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's the flowers that really register this the most. After months of shades of green, the flowers I planted are now blooming and their heads &nbsp;a dazzling splashes of colour in the garden beds like &nbsp;a cottager panorama straight out of &nbsp;<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><em><a href="http://aliceinwonderland.wikia.com/wiki/The_Flowers" target="_blank">Alice in Wonderland.</a></em></strong></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><br /></strong></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">They're ready to talk back...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sprinkled in the garden beds among salad greens, tomatoes, herbs and kale the flowers have changed the address to a bee supermarket.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Plants tumble over each other competing for light and space in a jungle that intensifies daily.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Dominating this understory are the tallest sunflowers I've ever seen -- let alone grown!</div><div style="text-align: justify;">They are Jack-and-the-Beanstalk sunflowers -- with stems as sturdy as bamboo canes -- forming heads that in a week's time will open and challenge the glory of the sun. The 'look' is sure to be amazing.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: justify;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://content.ngv.vic.gov.au/retrieve.php?size=large&amp;type=image&amp;vernonID=75876" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="http://content.ngv.vic.gov.au/retrieve.php?size=large&amp;type=image&amp;vernonID=75876" height="227" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">John Perceval:<em>Potato Field</em>&nbsp;(my fav Australian painting)</span></strong></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">In the past all I've grown are sunflowers thieved from poultry mash. But the real McCoy &nbsp;types are sure to be something else and I am now committed to always having a variety of sunflowers in my garden. Aside from the look they are great shade plants and already &nbsp;serve as rent-a-bean pole...just pop in a sunflower seed and step back.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Instant high rise.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And everyone of them faces, as sunflowers do, the house and the back verandah where we eat our meals.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://scontent-a-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/10672377_10152795554228185_8420725801968524383_n.jpg?oh=e9662b8f6582cc54b1e551c9f1ac4cd3&amp;oe=54B80AF9" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" class="align-left" height="132" src="https://scontent-a-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/10672377_10152795554228185_8420725801968524383_n.jpg?oh=e9662b8f6582cc54b1e551c9f1ac4cd3&amp;oe=54B80AF9" width="121" /></a>Seriously, where else can you get an securely anchored 'trellis' that climbs to three metres in a month of Sundays before channeling the glory of sunlight?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">My mound garden -- my hillocks seeded with potatoes -- are now looking bare as the potato plants have raced ahead and are now dying back after just 2 months in the ground. Spud die off looks bad. As though the exercise had failed to thrive. But the harvest from underneath is something else [(sample: &nbsp;Dutch Creams (pictured left)].</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I had seldom grown potatoes before but &nbsp;the taste of a freshly harvested spud is the ultimate in earthiness.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In places among all this contour I have zuchini sprawling about, and some attempts to kick start my cucumber career. Cukes are a culinary passion of mine -- a cuisine essential --and accessing, via cultivation, some of the many varieties is going to be my &nbsp;Summer hobby.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">So long as I can keep them away from the possums....and get them to have sex with one another.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The grape size tomatoes seem to be everywhere. Those I don't sell or use 'fresh' I prefer to dry in my dehydrator. This time around my quest is to determine <em>which small fruit tomatoe</em>s grow best in <em>my</em> soil --although I'm pushing the envelope. Grape toms go OK, like weeds do -- but the larger toms tend to suffer easily from disease.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Sweetleaf/Katuk is coming along and leafing up; the black mulberry has produced some huge fruits this year and most of the cuttings I planted as a hedgerow around the chook pen have struck; all the chokoes have taken root(I'm choko obsessed -- do you think 8 is enough?); the&nbsp;<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipomoea_aquatica" target="_blank">kankong</a></strong></em></span>&nbsp;have&nbsp;finally &nbsp;settled into their new abode (a succession of car tires with plastic underlay) and are now fleshing up;the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moringa_oleifera" target="_blank">Moringa</a>&nbsp;</strong></span>is away, now climbing skywards as is their keen want; the Warrigal Greens seem to be sprawling everywhere at my feet and are now beginning to set seed (will share); the taro is at home (in the valleys between the hills) as is the climbing yam; 'sweet potato alley' is doing alright (leastways I have had no complaints from that address); the Dragon Fruits cuttings have taken(they seem to appreciate my sandy soil, esp when I pair them with Pigface carpeting) and the frangipanis (I have over 20 located for the primary purpose of shade) are all extending the tips of their branches with the announcement that they are still &nbsp;very much alive, despite their Graveyard and Zombie reputations, and signing on for the season to come...Can you imagine the outlook when they all bloom through the months ahead? Looking out back it's &nbsp;a bit gob smacking to ponder.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What failed more than succeeded thus far are the root veg -- Watermelon radishes, carrots, and some of the beetroot. Reason? My soils are definitely too acid and I should have realised this before I planted my root crops.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallum" target="_blank">Wallum soils</a></strong></span>&nbsp;are registered acidic soils ..,. and I guess I'm gonna have to start monitoring my pH especially for those plants that like their dirt on the sweet side. Ah science! &nbsp;like ants it gets into everything.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As I've mentioned <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://brisbanelocalfood.ning.com/forum/topics/two-questions-1-seed-raising-practices-and-2-salad-mixes?commentId=2047708%3AComment%3A253582&amp;xg_source=activity" target="_self">elsewhere</a></strong></span>&nbsp;I'm producing most of my own seedlings rather than direct sow. While I plan to add seedlings sales to my market stall I'm much taken with the DIY newspaper pots. And selling seedlings in quaint paper cups is a niche thing.The really extend my flexibility: have garden/will travel/settle anywhere I decide.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Green nomads.Biodegradable wallpaper.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That's important as every part of my garden is under cultivation.<em>Poly plus plus</em> polyculture. It's like parking cars -- being opportunistic waiting &nbsp;for, then grabbing, &nbsp;a vacant space.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But the more I turn over the soil in order to sow direct, the more I encourage weed growth. And since we are at a time when there has been no mulch -- grass clippings -- for months, weed infestation among struggling young plants is a close as a tool scrape away.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As the garden takes off &nbsp;--<em><strong>really takes off &nbsp;--&nbsp;</strong></em>like I never imagined -- I've celebrated the fact by turning my last patch of grass (it would be an obscene exaggeration to ever refer to it as lawn) into a sand pit. 3 metre square -- I mined golden sand inside the chook pen to create an oasis &nbsp;within all the verdant happenings. Sterile yellow &nbsp;granules in their trillions aint that far down. We live on a sand spit at the mouth of a river after all. That's our geology. We've got sand mines in the neighbourhood.Now I have &nbsp;my own &nbsp;sand garden to remind me of all that past accumulated underneath.</div>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-76278298864079080572014-10-05T22:11:00.002+10:002014-10-05T22:11:54.502+10:00My space at my place<div style="text-align: justify;">I'm keen to celebrate 'my space'. Not the online <a href="https://myspace.com/">Myspace</a>&nbsp;that got done over by <b>facebook</b> but <i>my</i> space.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t31.0-8/1926113_10152372055918185_1719080853_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/t31.0-8/1926113_10152372055918185_1719080853_o.jpg" width="600" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Where I spend a good part of my time. </div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;">Boasting a spacious, open plan living and reclining area with access via sliding screen door to the 'veranda' and vegetable garden, offering a stunning and elevated view of the sky. Open both ends to the cooling breezes. Surrounded by birdlife, with on hand laundry and walk-in kitchen but a doorstep away. Within a stone's throw of poultry, clothes line and a wind sock. The location speaks for itself. Can be used as a car storage facility at resident's discretion.No body corporate fees. Current tenants two dogs. (Hair drop manageable. Straw broom supplied).</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Over time I've tweaked the setup a bit. I've changed my preferred &nbsp;seating option to a light director's chair, for instance...and I've added a torn rag rug for the floor to keep my tootsies warm over Winter...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The mix works, despite being a garage.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Through the back curtains I can pass thru another screen or curtains to the garden where I spend a lot of my outdoor time doing stuff.It's like living outdoors -- in a tent, caravan, hut or shed -- as I can moderate my atmospherics by closing or opening curtains, windows, roller or screen doors and such.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;A true Balinese indoor/outdoor room.I even open out to a forest of frangipanis...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Over Winter the design worked extremely well and I needed to have the heater on only &nbsp;a few times at night.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was cosy. Surprisingly so. No drafts. No chills.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Curtaining &nbsp;did that. Not only do curtains insulate, but &nbsp;I can simply pull curtains back and forth to alter temperature and light.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With concentrated spaces like this you gotta keep up with the housework. &nbsp;You need to sweep and keep your stuff in order.It also helps a lot not to have too much gear. Keep it simple. Live light...and customise.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I know where everything is in my 'den' because there isn't really that much of it. &nbsp;All of me that 'fits'. ..no more/no less.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Each time I enter the space from the outside I'm impressed by how cosy it feels. No 'interior decoration' in play. Just function and ambience.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">My space. One room. In use: furniture I appreciate and am attached to -- that have served me loyally for years.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><ul><li>Aunt Mary's Laminex kitchen table (circa 1950s)</li><li>Aunt Mary's wardrobe...old.</li><li>Cheap Ikea metal shelving .</li><li>A German-style night and day.</li><li>My mother-in-law's Director's Chair</li><li>..and a chest of drawers I don't know where from.</li><li>A poof.</li><li>Aunt Mary's old blanket storage box.</li><li>My daughter's hand-me down Apple Mac</li><li>...and a gorgeous retro side table my wife mosaiced.</li></ul><div>What more do I need?</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-72317674088202423162014-09-24T07:16:00.001+10:002014-09-24T07:16:40.407+10:00Samphire groweth in scepter'd isles <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://grist.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/s1.jpg?w=620&amp;h=413&amp;crop=1" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://grist.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/s1.jpg?w=620&amp;h=413&amp;crop=1" height="133" width="200" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">I just planted some <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samphire">Samphire.</a>...</span></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">You say what?</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">But in <i>King Lear </i>we learn its ecology:</div></span><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">"Come on, sir. Here’s the place. Stand still. How fearful</span></div><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">And dizzy ’tis to cast one’s eyes so low!</div></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">The crows and choughs that wing the midway air</div></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down</div></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Hangs one that gathers samphire—dreadful trade!"</div></span></blockquote><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">In the US, Samphire has been born again as 'Sea Bean' pitched as a delicious, seemingly new age, salad, stir fry and frittata vegetable.Here, it's grown commercially in salt marshes along the Snowy River...watered by the tides.</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">And since I truly love Warrigal Greens (aka New Zealand Spinach), Samphire is my new must-have bush tucker. Point being that both Warrigal Greens and Samphire are coastal plants prone to mangrove wetland habitations...which is my neighbourhood.</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">And while 'gathering Samphire' was a Elizabethan trade we have our own local species in our own scepter'd isle....</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">[Ah! my first great Shakespeare speech --'<i>Richard II</i>']: What jingoism!</div></span></span><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">"This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,</span></div><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,</div></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">This other Eden, demi-paradise,</div></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">This fortress built by Nature for herself</div></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Against infection and the hand of war,</div></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">This happy breed of men, this little world,</div></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">This precious stone set in the silver sea,</div></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Which serves it in the office of a wall,</div></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Or as a moat defensive to a house,</div></span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Against the envy of less happier lands.."</div></span></blockquote><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; display: inline;"><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Obviously hardly the stuff of Scottish independence and long before the onset of current neo-liberal preferences...but I'm sure Tony Abbott would have felt right at home excepting the bad time of it the catholics were having.</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Henry XIII (Queen Liz's father) delivered a campaign against Popery in similar spin mode as our own Islamophobes in Canberra. ..and for similar reasons.</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Irony is that under Henry XIII the 'nationalisations' and sacking of the monasteries was privatisation in reverse and the wealth garnered greatly imbued the English state and ruling class. En route Henry invented capitalist banking by allowing the charging of interest on lent money...thus changing the religious codes against usury.</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Big changes-- restructuring and 'reform' akin to current habits -- but then, a few years later (in 1642) the English peeps forgot all about scepter'd isles and royal thrones, rose up in revolt,executed their king and set up a republic.</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><div style="text-align: justify;">And all that time, hanging off the cliffs, or nestled under mangrove in the far off Antipodes,just within reach, were bunches of Samphire...</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-73381801573471097192014-09-11T23:37:00.000+10:002014-09-11T23:37:28.709+10:00Garden Mappery<a href="http://api.ning.com/files/EcbC6jILNn11jUQNuaoYx6YL1zfeLHBpwJKe-PyM*tb3ks2YLUxECYJ0z81ZRgIWUorH21nyPFrpIJpiPq3wUC6qX11uPPOZ/20140910GardenPlan.jpg" target="_self"><img class="align-full" src="http://api.ning.com:80/files/EcbC6jILNn11jUQNuaoYx6YL1zfeLHBpwJKe-PyM*tb3ks2YLUxECYJ0z81ZRgIWUorH21nyPFrpIJpiPq3wUC6qX11uPPOZ/20140910GardenPlan.jpg" width="700" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Since I was out and about and outback, I decided to give into impulse and map the garden beds.It frustrates me that a photo doesn't take in the overall.Now with a simple template I can sketch out a plantation planting plan whenever I want.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Looking at the layout I think I can fit in &nbsp;another citrus next to the lemon and I'd like to squeeze in another fig somewhere in the mix. The Pawpaws aren't shown, nor are my lazy banana, 6 Dragon fruits, and 2 passionfruit vines.Theres' a couple of grape vines among all this but they're hardly worth the effort.I'll let them scramble over the mulberries.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">You can't see the mounds for the potato and cucurbit&nbsp;stems covering these hillocks. There's taro somewhere in there too. These contours have been much more productive than I expected. Sand, manure and soil thrown on top of brush cuttings with open trenches mulching in between.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The parallel East-West beds aren't so much raised as the paths on their borders dug down.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The BathTub Bed &nbsp;has been a bit of a disappointment so far. OK for raising seedlings but my sand mix hasn't registered very well. Once I solve the fertility issues I'll add another two bathtubs parallel to the one I've got. Further north there sun quotient falls as you approach the house. But i reckon I could have a few potted options.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kangkong may be growing in too much shade but the plants sit in gutted tires with muddiness atop plastic sheet underlay, surrounded by garden mint in the long bed that's primarily sweet potato.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The beds to the right (west) on the diagram are all watered with terracotta pot irrigation and the mounds to the left (east) by a 90 litre tank and Leaky Hose.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I don't &nbsp;usually compost above ground, but I'm planning to locate a manure compost heap inside the chook pen.The chooks love the fauna that comes with the dollops. That means my mine -- the chook pen 'dirt' -- will be richer any time I need more soil to go. As it is there's a couple of deep holes in the run already.Sand mining on my part. Chicken cubbies.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Since my frangipanis won't be high enough for all the shade I'll need, come Summer, I'm experimenting with sunflowers and tomatoes as I find the pawpaws I planted to be very invasive: shallow roots all over. Them frangipanis are so easy to work with. Just the sort of plant to invite home to meet mother.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Silky Oak, on the other hand, is real big. Over 15 metres high. Nonetheless the killer heat comes from the south west during Summer, and I'm trying to assuage that with selective tree plantings. At a pinch I'll add more Katuk (Sweet Leaf) bushes 'cuase you can never have too much Katuk over Summer.</div>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-58734109599948197732014-09-09T23:42:00.000+10:002014-09-09T23:42:43.397+10:00The Spring garden takes off<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10006947_10152738907643185_1747372847177382946_n.jpg?oh=db893ff98be6757a672a098c96d1af6c&amp;oe=545F1359&amp;__gda__=1415472934_1ec883074b9640eee862660a2d20bc7d" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10006947_10152738907643185_1747372847177382946_n.jpg?oh=db893ff98be6757a672a098c96d1af6c&amp;oe=545F1359&amp;__gda__=1415472934_1ec883074b9640eee862660a2d20bc7d" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The Spring garden takes off!</div><div style="text-align: justify;">A polycultural jungle.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Very little weed infestation. No bug problems at the moment (touch wood).</div><div style="text-align: justify;">As well as greens I'm harvesting root vegetables, beans, and a ready herb supply.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Pending among all that cascading greenery is a mix of flowers ,tomatoes, sunflowers, keen potatoes, sweet peppers, eggplant and Cucurbits.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Despite the dry weather and lack of mulch supply, I seem to have solved many of my water issues. A couple 'understory' over shading problems due to impulse plantings of tomatoes -- but the close planting of different species is generally working to very good effect.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was working in the Deagon community market garden last Friday and there the weeds are vigorously active. Mine are for now contained despite my ready use of grass clippings and manures.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Selective&nbsp;watery sure helps. I rely on the&nbsp;terracotta&nbsp;pots and supplement with hand watering to plants that seem to&nbsp;need it, seeds and seedlings especially.I also try to keep the conduction channels open between my buried pots by&nbsp;moisturising&nbsp;the soils.All thats' required is a shallow sprinkle...at least on my sands.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Hereon in my set tasks are:</div><ul><li style="text-align: justify;">to skill up on the layering of plantings relative to growth height and root depth and spread.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">to nail some essential companion planting protocols.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">to engineer best practice <strong><em>for my garden</em></strong> between planting seeds direct and planting in flats. Each seed I sow is now sown with &nbsp;tweezers. So what may seem like a mess is actually consciously planted in place -- for good or ill.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">to master the gentle art of successive planting for scheduled harvesting.</li></ul>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-42714471326730262802014-09-01T20:25:00.000+10:002014-09-01T20:25:49.051+10:00Using Animal Manures in the Vegetable Garden<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.uidaho.edu/~/media/Images/Promo/187/187x128/Bioenergy/Bioenergy/manure%20happens%20187x128.ashx" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.uidaho.edu/~/media/Images/Promo/187/187x128/Bioenergy/Bioenergy/manure%20happens%20187x128.ashx" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I use manures in my garden. Unfortunately, especially in &nbsp;the United States, there's been a lot of debate about using manures in the organic garden. Organic certification there requires:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Certified organic farmers, however, must have a farm plan detailing the methods used to build soil fertility including the application of manure or composted manure. Certified organic farmers are prohibited from using raw manure for at least 90 days before harvest of crops grown for human consumption....<span style="color: black;">The U.S. regulations for organic production require that raw animal manure must be composted unless it is applied to land used for a crop not intended for human consumption; or</span>&nbsp;is<span style="color: black;">&nbsp;incorporated into the soil not less than 120 days prior to the harvest of a product whose edible portion has direct contact with soil; or&nbsp;is&nbsp;</span><span style="color: black;">incorporated into the soil not less than 90 days prior to the harvest of a product whose edible portion does not have direct contact with the soil surface or soil particles.&nbsp;</span></i></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">One reason for this was an engineered backlash &nbsp;that argued that organic produce was food grown in manure...and that it was a health risk to eat. So organic farmers worked hard to cover themselves.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;The UK body has&nbsp;<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.gov.uk/converting-to-organic-farming" target="_blank">a different &nbsp;approach:</a></strong></span></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Livestock manure can be used with the agreement of your organic&nbsp;<abbr title="Control Body">CB</abbr>&nbsp;as a supplement where the fertility building phase of the rotation is not sufficient to produce the required soil nutrient level. Where possible manures, which should normally be composted before use, should be recycled on the farm on which they were produced. If they are taken off the farm they must be used on another organic holding. Organic standards strictly control the use of brought-in animal manures from non-organic holdings - they can only be used with the permission of your organic&nbsp;<abbr title="Control Body">CB</abbr>&nbsp;and must come from extensive production systems.</i></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">In effect, what organic farmers are being forced to do is source their compost from commercial suppliers, who have a strict scientific approach to composting, rather than invest in the business, and presumed risks, of creating their own. This adds to in farm costs and the price of organic foods.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Jeff Gillman addresses this topic in &nbsp;<em>The Truth About Organic Gardening:</em></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">"'The practice of adding compost, including composted manure, to soil is a good one as long as you compost appropriately." Gillman, however, does cite a study that found that E. coli O157:H7 can live in uncomposted manure for 21 months.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Cornell University&nbsp;<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/factsheets/orgmatter/#manures" target="_blank">similarly argues:</a></strong></span></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Fresh manure must be used with caution in the garden because it may contain pathogenic bacteria such as E. coli, Listeria, and Salmonella. Although the chance of contamination is slim, severe sickness and even death may occur if contaminated produce is eaten. To be safe, either compost your manure or apply it in the fall after harvest. Wash your hands after handling manure and try to leave at least 120 days between application of fresh manure and harvest of a crop.</i></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">The complication is really salad veg in contact with any manured soil, as well as unwashed and uncooked root vegetables, which may act as fomites for E.Coli and Salmonella.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">I've always presumed &nbsp;anything coming from the dirt to be 'dirty' and should be treated accordingly.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;">This of course raises the prospect of to&nbsp;<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://gardenrant.com/2009/03/manure-or-not-to-manure.html" target="_blank">Manure Or Not To Manure</a>&nbsp;</strong></span>(discussion thread is excellent). However, further polemics exist that argue that you should not even add animal manures to your domestic compost heap because the quality of your composting process may not be up to the sterilisation standards needed: right temperature/required time span.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">However I did find this research snippet:<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://aem.asm.org/content/68/5/2605.full" target="_blank">Fate of Escherichia coli O157:H7 in Manure-Amended Soil</a>&nbsp;</strong></span>which reports:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Escherichia coli&nbsp;O157:H7 cells survived for up to 77, &gt;226, and 231 days in manure-amended autoclaved soil held at 5, 15, and 21°C, respectively. Pathogen populations declined more rapidly in manure-amended unautoclaved soil under the same conditions, likely due to antagonistic interactions with indigenous soil microorganisms.&nbsp;E. coli&nbsp;O157:H7 cells were inactivated more rapidly in both autoclaved and unautoclaved soils amended with manure at a ratio of 1 part manure to 10 parts soil at 15 and 21°C than in soil samples containing dilute amounts of manure. The manure-to-soil ratio, soil temperature, and indigenous microorganisms of the soil appear to be contributory factors to the pathogen's survival in manure-amended soil.</i></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Confused? Well the research may not be &nbsp;conclusive and you'll find many variations of recommendations online about how to handle animal manures in the vegetable garden. As you know &nbsp;animal manures are an efficient way to heat up a compost heap ...and do it quickly.&nbsp;</div><ul><li style="text-align: justify;">Useful resource:<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.homegrownfun.com/how-to-use-manure-in-the-vegetable-garden-chicken-horse-cow/" target="_blank">5 Tips for Using Manures in the Garden</a></strong></span></li></ul><div style="text-align: justify;">But there may be a way around all this if you think your habits need adjusting. &nbsp;This &nbsp;approach composts animal manures alone rather than mixing them up with other stuff. And you compost very hot and very quickly. This is a variation of&nbsp;the<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>&nbsp;<a href="http://deepgreenpermaculture.com/diy-instructions/hot-compost-composting-in-18-days/" target="_blank">Berkeley method,</a></strong></span>&nbsp;developed by the University of California, Berkley...but it's less labour intense. I suggest it may also be a good idea to keep a cake or meat thermometer&nbsp;on&nbsp;hand and make sure your pile registers 60&nbsp;degrees Celsius. I suspect that a variation of &nbsp;this technique was used by the 19th Century &nbsp;French Intensive Market gardeners, although they buried their manures to compost anaerobically.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dpKuVh8xXXs?wmode=opaque" width="560"></iframe></div>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-41153300326048523182014-08-21T00:48:00.000+10:002014-08-21T01:57:47.820+10:00French Intensive: La culture maraîchère downunder <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Carte_Photo_des_ets_A._Bernard_Horticulteur_STD-Ret-.jpg/800px-Carte_Photo_des_ets_A._Bernard_Horticulteur_STD-Ret-.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Carte_Photo_des_ets_A._Bernard_Horticulteur_STD-Ret-.jpg/800px-Carte_Photo_des_ets_A._Bernard_Horticulteur_STD-Ret-.jpg" height="355" width="500" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I is here. Yesiree.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Finally.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After a very intense period of exploration and research I'm thinking that I have discovered my preferred gardening 'model'.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What I mean by that is that I have narrowed in on the 'system' that suits my environmental context and my habits...my journey.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It has a name and history and it's &nbsp;called <a href="http://hipcrime.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/french-market-gardens-la-culture.html"><b>French Intensive Market Gardening</b>.</a></div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;"><i>La culture maraîchère</i> referred to the intensive methods of gardening developed in the urban areas of Paris from about 1850 to 1900, and often referred to in English as "French intensive gardening." It was a series of techniques developed over the years by experimentation for gardeners to produce large quantities of fresh vegetables for city dwellers. It also dealt with a major urban problem at the time - what to do with all the manure from the horses used for transportation. French intensive gardening was designed to grow the maximum amount of vegetables on the minimum area possible, since urban plots were invariably small and noncontinuous...The average Parisian market garden was between one and two acres in size, with plants grown on eighteen-inch beds of combined straw and horse manure from the stables. Although the plots were relatively small, the techniques used to attend to them were highly detail-oriented and labor intensive. In the words of one grower, "always tend the smallest amount of land possible, but tend it exceptionally well." In order to get the maximum amount of produce from a small area, many techniques were used in concert. Crops were planted so close together that when the plants were mature, their leaves would barely touch. The close spacing provided a mini-climate and a living mulch that reduced weed growth and helped hold moisture in the soil. Companion planting was used - growing certain plants together that enhance each other. <a href="http://hipcrime.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/french-market-gardens-la-culture.html">[Source]</a></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_intensive_gardening">French Intensive Gardening </a></b>is often referred to as 'Double Dig' but I don't do that. There's no point because I've only got sand to dig up under my shallow loamy layer. I'm finding instead that with my trusty&nbsp;Ho-Mi &nbsp;Hoe and my &nbsp;handy sieve, I can fashion a <i>version Francais</i> that suits <i>Terra Australis</i>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_intensive_gardening">French Intensive Gardening&nbsp;</a></b>is also linked with &nbsp;'<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodynamic_agriculture">Biodynamic'</a>&nbsp; gardening because it was adapted, tweaked and repackaged by people like&nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner">Rudolf Steiner</a>, &nbsp;<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Chadwick">Allan Chadwick</a>&nbsp;et al. &nbsp;I don't respond to these later quirks much at all, so I'm very much a French classicist and my interest is anchored in 19th Century Paris.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm also still caught between approaches so I'm no purist. I'm eclectic. While I may be trying to talk &nbsp;French, my dialect is local and 21st Century.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For the sake of context, I'll try to list why I prefer &nbsp;<i>La culture maraîchère </i>to other&nbsp;systems<i>:</i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><ol><li style="text-align: justify;">It relies on friable soils...and mine are sandy ++++.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">Its primary input is horse manure ...and mine is cow and horse dung. So there's no intense investment in making (aerobic) compost as an arduous supplementary activity.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">It is focused on making the best use of a small gardening space...and I'm gardening with marketing ambition in a suburban backyard.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">It merges my long time interest in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottage_garden">English Cottage </a>and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_garden">French <i>Potager&nbsp;</i></a>&nbsp;gardens with some core, and very dedicated, polycultural &nbsp;-- <a href="http://www.permaculture.org.uk/mixedveg">mixed vegetable gardening</a> -- preferences . I'm no formalist, so mix and match suits me just fine.&nbsp;</li><li style="text-align: justify;">It is ruled by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_garden">market gardening </a>precepts so it isn't distracted by &nbsp;countervailing<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_gardening"> 'food forest'</a> and strict Permaculture shibboleths.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">It is driven by, and committed to, the growing of annuals rather than perennials.Any perennials are espaliered or coppiced.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">It is primarily a gardening system ruled by what's to hand and available -- horse manure -- rather than idealising inputs and paying big bucks for them. <i>Très pas cher.</i></li></ol><div style="text-align: justify;">Nonetheless, I'm proceeding with a few adaptions in mind and the primary one is that the 'digging ' over of my soil is left to the critters -- like worms -- that inhabit it. I merely seek to 'scrape the surface'.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">'Double Dig' be dammed.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I also use, and rely on, sheet mulching when the French did not. But my mulch is grass clippings which begin life very desiccated anyway and break down quickly.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So I'm thinking it's coming together, so to speak, underfoot.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Before me I have this sharp learning curve as I get to know my plants in this novel Gallic environment.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The principles in play do, however, lend themselves to adaptations. For instance their raised beds built atop manure cores remind of my own mounds built on mulch mixes...and I imported that edge, not from Paris, but &nbsp;from the South Pacific.<br /><br />I'm also reliant on terracotta pots for irrigation when they relied on watering cans.<br /><br />They long-trench mulched vigorously with manures, when I prefer &nbsp;single holes -- as I don't want to 'disturb' the ecological integrity of the beds. They used pure manure(+straw) fills when I use grass clippings, paper and manure. My French forbears and I do, however, agree that manures can be buried when still &nbsp;young.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And while I'm polyculural, I'm more polycultural, in a mayhem sort of way, than they were.I can so indulge myself &nbsp;because the scale of my project is smaller.<br /><br />Unlike them, I keenly engineer shade as a hot weather element in the design mix.<br /><br />That said there are a few attributes of &nbsp;<i>La culture maraîchère</i> &nbsp;that I still need to understand and work through.<br /><br />If it supposedly uses less water than other methods of gardening, how is that water 'held' in the garden bed? What's the sponge? While the method makes weeding easy, the business of churning up the soil surely activates weed seeding. Because the soil is loose and friable, weeds may indeed be &nbsp;at a disadvantage, and are easily pulled up by their roots, but there's sure to be more of them, right? Especially since I mulch with cut grass and use manures.... But then I know my own weeds and the only problematical one in this context I can envisage is the low growing chickweed. Runner grasses, the ones I abhor, won't stand a chance.<br /><br />So this is &nbsp;'intense' also in the sense of labour intense. If the mulch regime fails I'll be weeding more.<br /><br /><i>C'est vie</i><br /><i><br /></i>There's also these considerations to deal with, given my conditions:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">The hotter the climate, the more you should consider whether or not raised beds are truly beneficial, especially with sandy soils. Sandy soils are likely to be low in nitrogen and organic matter; too much intensive digging may only exaggerate these problems. The hotter the summer climate, the faster organic matter is consumed. The more frequently you dig soils in hot summer weather, the more material you will need to add to compensate for oxidation. However, once the living mulch covers the bed, it will help to moderate high soil temperatures. In a hot, dry summer climate, the soil in a raised bed may not only heat up too much but also be vulnerable to drying out--thus negating one of the benefits of BFI.&nbsp;<b><a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1987-08-23/magazine/tm-3187_1_french-intensive-method">[Source]</a></b></blockquote></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Some useful online resources about French Intensive Gardening:<br /><br /></div><ul style="background-color: white; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important;"><li style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important;"><div style="font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important;"><span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: underline;"><strong style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;"><a href="http://www.vegetable-gardening-with-lorraine.com/French-intensive-garden.html" rel="nofollow" style="color: #333333; font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">The French Intensive, Double-Dug &nbsp;Raised Bed Vegetable Garden</a></strong></span>&nbsp;-- useful summary.</div></li><li style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important;"><span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: underline;"><strong style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;"><a href="https://archive.org/details/frenchmarketgard00weatrich"><em style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;">French Market Gardening</em>&nbsp;(Published 1909/full text)</a></strong></span>.&nbsp;Important English reference .</li><li style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important;"><span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: underline;"><strong style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;"><a href="http://casfs.ucsc.edu/documents/for-the-gardener/French_Intensive.pdf" rel="nofollow" style="color: #333333; font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">French Intensive Gardening: A Retrospective</a>&nbsp;</strong></span>-- handy over view but focused on&nbsp;Alan Chadwick's adaptions.</li><li style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important;"><span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: underline;"><strong style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;"><a href="http://hipcrime.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/french-market-gardens-la-culture.html" rel="nofollow" style="color: #333333; font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">French Market Gardens - La Culture Maraîchère</a>&nbsp;</strong></span>-- good historical review.</li><li style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important;"><span style="color: #5e5e5e; font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: underline;"><strong style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;"><a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1987-08-23/magazine/tm-3187_1_french-intensive-method" rel="nofollow" style="color: #333333; font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">GARDENS : In Good Tilth : How the Biodynamic French Intensive Metho...</a></strong></span><span style="color: #5e5e5e;">&nbsp;</span>--&nbsp;<i style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;">From "Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape--Naturally," by Robert Kourik, 1986 by Robert Kourik</i><i style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;">.</i>Useful provisos.Maybe the method isn't for all situations.</li><li style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important;"><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: underline;"><strong style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;"><a href="http://www.alan-chadwick.org/html%20pages/techniques/garden_plants/veg_photos.html" rel="nofollow" style="color: #333333; font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">The Biodynamic French Intensive System --A Photo Gallery of Alan Ch...</a></strong></span>-- </span>enough musings to charm you big time.</li><li style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important;"><span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: underline;"><strong style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;"><em style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;"><a href="https://archive.org/details/intensiveculture00aquarich" rel="nofollow" style="color: #333333; font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Intensive Culture of Vegetables on the French System</a></em></strong></span>&nbsp;by P. Aquatias (1913)</li><li style="list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important;"><span style="color: #5e5e5e; font-family: Lucida Grande, Lucida Sans Unicode, sans-serif;"><a href="https://archive.org/details/frenchmethodofin00herr"><b>French method of intensive cultivation and asparagus forcing : a treatise on the French method of gardening </b></a>(1910)</span><span style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Lucida Sans Unicode, sans-serif;"> by H.Herrman.</span></li><li style="list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important;"><span style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Lucida Sans Unicode, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit;">Best book I've read:</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit;"><a href="http://www.themarketgardener.com/" style="font-style: italic;"><b>The Market Gardener: A successful grower's handbook for small-scale organic farming </b></a>by&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Lucida Grande, Lucida Sans Unicode, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px;">Jean-Martin Fortier. Fortier's book encouraged me to <i>garden francais.</i></span></span></li></ul>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-76601502065723647672014-08-11T09:16:00.004+10:002014-08-11T09:16:59.728+10:00Waffles, Sponges, Cornmeal and other delicacies.<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/t31.0-8/s720x720/10333638_10152672805128185_5112381128158701810_o.jpg" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/t31.0-8/s720x720/10333638_10152672805128185_5112381128158701810_o.jpg" /></a></div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">A friend was talking about the Three Sisters (corns/beans/squash) and indigenous agricultural practices in arid regions of North America. Some of these approaches are covered in <em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/" target="_blank">Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond</a></strong></span></em>&nbsp;by Brad Lancaster. Inspired&nbsp;I was trying to replicate the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.google.com.au/search?q=Zuni+waffle+garden&amp;es_sm=91&amp;tbm=isch&amp;tbo=u&amp;source=univ&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=BI3nU7r6FpDk8AWkioGQDA&amp;ved=0CB0QsAQ&amp;biw=1660&amp;bih=929" target="_blank">Zuni waffle garden</a></strong></span>&nbsp;practice. It really suits our aridness.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">However, my sandy soil is so friable that I couldn't build the walls so that the grid stayed put. So I've used galvanised edging which I had and &nbsp;cut it roughly into 2 metre lengths(see image bottom right and centre left) and direct seeded within that.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The metal gives me any shape I want, not just squares.When the seedlings come up, the plan is to remove the wall and reuse it elsewhere. Hypothetically the metal reflects sunlight onto the bed and protects young plants from wind.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">I thought, great! So I got myself another roll of some of this stuff so that now it's a gardening essential. I either enclose the seed bed or just wall it on three sides.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">My 'soil' is so sandy that even digging holes in new land &nbsp;the sand simply falls in on itself.While I previously built my beds on top of these grains, I'm now experimenting with sifting and mixing manures through the sand to give it texture.The manures hold water in place and counteract erosion.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm also experimenting further with&nbsp;<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://kickbike.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/sponge-hole-irrigation.html" target="_blank">Vertical Sponges</a>&nbsp;</strong></span>and I'm impressed with the results.I'm making the paper/manure mixes really pithy and soggy so that when I ram them into the freshly dug hole they really take a basin shape as I extend the lip wider than the hole to engineer a broader billabong. Rather than mulch over &amp; mark, the exposed paper mix on the surface flags the sponge's presence. I've also used the same approach for elongated trenches, when building new beds. They act like an underground &nbsp;skeleton.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IDpear4grr8/U9Jb_digfSI/AAAAAAAAHbE/nz2y2uDpTQA/s1600/sponge.jpg" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IDpear4grr8/U9Jb_digfSI/AAAAAAAAHbE/nz2y2uDpTQA/s1600/sponge.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Any new planting of perennials I make sure a sponge hole is located nearby.Once you master the mix &nbsp;the technique it really is like sculpting with <em>papier mache</em>. &nbsp;</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Soaked and torn up paper + water + sifted manures + anything else you may have on hand and you'd like to add...with gloves on: mix and churn it up. Let marinate &nbsp;then use. Yum.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">This comes back to keeping garden worms happy and feeling at home.Worm requirements (moisture + pH + food, etc) are specific it seems and it took me a few years to attract them to my garden in any census numbers.Now I'm trying to get the in-house population to move about and settle new lands.So my next trick is to <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://homeguides.sfgate.com/use-cornmeal-attract-earthworms-garden-73840.html" target="_blank">sprinkle cornmeal</a></strong></span>&nbsp;about. It's a form of baiting.&nbsp;</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Thinks: maybe I could add cornmeal to the sponge mix as well?</div><div style="text-align: justify;">This issue came up because a neighbour, recently moved here, could not get over the fact that her new plot had not one garden worm. I said,"sure -- it's a fact, a brutal fact, that worms aren't in residence."She has some clay but still...So I went looking for the DIY of worm accommodation. But in sand -- which is constantly drying out --there isn't enough moisture to enable the worms <strong>to breath</strong>.Pretty basic lifestyle stuff, right? So that's task #1 -- water.Then you look at the menu. The worms moved in soon after I solved my irrigation challenges...and now I'm seriously worm farming and Butcher Birds alight nearby every time I turn a bit of soil.I have chooks but I can never bring myself to share my worms with them...they're my hard working peasants, my angels, and I dedicate myself to keeping them healthy and happy.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">While I'm experimented with a few earth moving approaches to harvest rainwater, when I widened the beds recently and&nbsp;<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://kickbike.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/gardening-with-mounds.html" target="_blank">built my mounds</a></strong></span>&nbsp;I dug down, so that now you <em><strong>step down</strong></em> into the garden when you walk through it. Given that my land is flat, this geography is novel. This is not something to try at home if you have clay underfoot but these narrow walkways between the beds and mounds are impacting such that, if we ever get any rain, they'll slow its run off and seepage. I've experimented with mulching materials before -- especially old rags and plastic -- to cover these footpaths, but managing these materials was painful. &nbsp;In some areas I've simply covered these walkways with scrub cuts , like with banana circle fill, but I suspect that maybe a variation of the sponge mix may suit if I can get enough paper. &nbsp;Sheets of paper not only look unsightly but they blow away. &nbsp;But a layer of papier mache -- paper mash + sand mix? -- could work? Any mulches I get go directly onto the beds.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nonetheless, may be foot traffic will suffice to compact the paths' surface enough so that seepage is delayed after any downpour. To hold up the sides of the garden beds so that they don't erode into the paths, I'm planting directly on the bed verge --and since I eat a lot of the stuff -- the best thing I've found for this so far, are spring onions! They're deep rooted -- and rather than deploy my seedling supply, I also plant the root ends of bunches I buy at the fruit &amp; veg shop to supplement my consumption. That and chives take root in the friable edges.It is a bit of a <em>potager</em> effect. Since I try to harvest spring onions via a cut-and-come-again approach without uprooting them, I'm hopeful the spring onion borders will work.</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">I've used lemongrass in similar mode before but lemon grass can be too big to garden around.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Another traditional American practice I follow is <em>ollas</em> -- terracotta pots -- for irrigation.The pot lids are the parked flying saucers in the photoes. That's magnificent and has been a game changer because with sand you need to water often.&nbsp;</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">But then-- another Indian trick also followed in north west China -- is using sand as mulch.This time of year I can't get green mulches until the grasses start growing again.While I use junk mail bits on the soil surface, sand I have a plenty. And I'm experimenting with that as a mulch cover. Hypothetically sterile sand should make an excellent mulching material. All I have to do is dig for it and scatter it between the plants.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm finding after using trellises and other apparati that any old long piece of wood can be supported upright or on a lean to carry climbers like beans. &nbsp;I don't grow corn, because I don't eat it -- so no '3 Sisters'. That doesn't solve the choko issue -- its climbing requirements -- and I grow a lot of chokoes -- but any old branch can be put to use. so long as I keep up a supply of metal rods (old tent poles and such) I get from the tip to anchor any upright. Thats' how the poles stay aloft in the gallery.Many are feral bamboo harvests left over from old builds.You can never have too much bamboo.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Tomatoes I just lean brushes around the plants but I'm running out of branches.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Related is this book:<strong><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">&nbsp;<a href="http://garynabhan.com/i/archives/2113" target="_blank">Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land&nbsp;-&nbsp;Lessons from Desert Farmers on Adapting to Climate Uncertainty</a></span></em>&nbsp;by&nbsp;<a href="http://www.chelseagreen.com/authors/gary_paul_nabhan/">Gary Nabhan</a>.</strong></div>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-9660970147541840432014-08-03T14:21:00.003+10:002014-08-03T14:22:47.758+10:00Market Cart<div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; text-align: justify;">It wasn't a great day at the markets yesterday (they're monthly) but I'm proud of my snazzy market cart which is being renovated.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Looking gooood.</i><br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It used to be a bike cart and I'd carry my community artz workshop wares around from school to school with me peddling up front.<br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Since it has been used to ferry my canoe to the seashore.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Now it's a perfect produce market artefact.<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/t1.0-9/p526x296/10501918_10152663633988185_3332742549777865182_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="296" src="https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/t1.0-9/p526x296/10501918_10152663633988185_3332742549777865182_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>What style, eh?</b></span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And, of course, there's no show without Punch!</div><br /><div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">For those who pursue the market route I tell you the challenge of picking and presevering the stuff is a big one, even by day-before standards. I made a mistake yesterday and wrapped the greens in wet paper as an experiment. Thinking: I'd get horizontal display.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Did not work and wilting was a big problem, esp with the young greens</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Best practice so far (from my limited experience) is to:</div><ol style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 2.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Pick early in the day of harvest.</li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 2.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Immediately place the cut stems in water -- just like flowers in a vase. &amp;/or refrigerate/cool storage overnight.</li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 2.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Always shade your produce.&nbsp;</li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 2.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Use an atomiser spray to water the plants when on display.</li></ol><div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Rather than weigh out and such I sell in $2 lots -- so I have freedom to decide on what goes in the batch or bundle.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Since harvest is such a fickle schedule -- I'm trying to promote drop-by market days from home. Market one Saturday-open garden day a fortnight later....'pick while you wait'.</div>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-49040715608090515832014-07-26T01:10:00.001+10:002014-07-26T01:36:56.777+10:00Sponge Hole Irrigation<div style="text-align: justify;">I've been experimenting with the mulching technique I've previously called a <b><a href="http://kickbike.blogspot.com.au/search?q=honey+hole">Honey Hole or &nbsp;Fertility Trench.</a></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is a very simple method that is a useful for &nbsp;irrigating and introducing &nbsp;fertility into the soil. I refer to these holes as 'worm takeaways' because they concentrate a lot of organic matter in the one spot, and once settled, garden worms will move in and feast up.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But these holes' primary function -- while their contents breaks down -- is as a water sponge.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So they serve two functions:</div><ul><li style="text-align: justify;">a vertical fertility mulch</li><li style="text-align: justify;">a water reserve/irrigating sponge</li></ul><div style="text-align: justify;">The trick is in the mix that you fill the holes with.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>The Sponge Mix</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After some experimentation I'm currently working from this recipe:</div><div><ol><li style="text-align: justify;">Throw old newspapers, junk mail, old phone books, cardboard, etc into a large container -- I use a wheelbarrow -- and steep &nbsp;them in water.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">When thoroughly wet, shred the papers and cardboard by &nbsp;tearing the pieces apart with your hands. You should end up with lots of shredded paper and cardboard strips, something like <i>papier mache</i></li><li style="text-align: justify;">Put on some rubber gloves and with a sieve or just your hands break up a quantity of manure and sprinkle it into the paper mix, tossing, stirring &nbsp;and blending the manure in as if you were making a muffin mix. The paper strips should all be &nbsp;well coated with the manure. Delicious-- but don't lick the spoon.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">Depending on your soil, the nature of your manures and so forth a good rule of thumb is a mix of 30-40% manure to 60-70% wet paper.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">If the mix is too dry -- add more water -- and let the manure/paper mix marinate for 5 &nbsp;to &nbsp;7 days, stirring occasionally so that you brew a dense&nbsp;<b><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s2002063.htm">manure tea</a></b>.</li></ol></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Once you have prepared your sponge mix, you can dig your holes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IDpear4grr8/U9Jb_digfSI/AAAAAAAAHbE/nz2y2uDpTQA/s1600/sponge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IDpear4grr8/U9Jb_digfSI/AAAAAAAAHbE/nz2y2uDpTQA/s1600/sponge.jpg" height="381" width="550" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>The Hole </b></div><div><ol><li style="text-align: justify;">With a hand spade dig a hole roughly half the depth of your forearm. I dump the soil I dig up into a 3 litre plastic pot so that I can keep each hole I dig the same depth and volume. Using a pot also keeps the soil off the garden bed, and any plants, &nbsp;nearby.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">Fill the hole with a generous amount of sponge mix and ram the mix down into the hole with your (gloved) fist or/&amp; a mallet. You want to really stuff the mix into the hole so that you end up with a convex depression on top with the mix rising up on the sides of the hole. That's your mini-billabong.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">Now place a stick or rod in the centre of your hole &nbsp;and tip your bucket of dug up soil on the top of the hole. Pat the soil down and wiggle the stick to create &nbsp;a crater --something like a hole on a putting green.</li><li style="text-align: justify;">Mark your crater with a stick or label rod so that its location is flagged in your garden bed.</li></ol></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">When watering the garden, direct a spray at the flagged crater you have marked so that the the mix below engorges with water and pools on top, like a miniature pond. If you dug each hole approximately the same depth and diameter, you should be aware how large is your sponge bowl.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Location. Location.</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I use these sponge holes as a supplement to my <a href="http://kickbike.blogspot.com.au/search/label/Terracotta%20Pot%20Irrigation"><b>terracotta pot irrigation system</b></a>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I position them in sections of the garden bed where I think the water from the pots isn't reaching. Since water is its own conductor, these sponge holes can act as channeling stations for water across the distances between the pots.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The large paper content serves as a sponge that absorbs water when &nbsp;wetted and, as the sponge mix breaks down, the elevated carbon in the soil increases its water holding capacity, protecting the soil from &nbsp;future arid conditions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sponge holes are also very effective when dug next to newly planted trees and perennials. They are also much less disturbing to soil structure than the excavation required to &nbsp;dig elongated mulch trenches. While the manured &nbsp;'goodness' is concentrated in one spot, soil biota and worms will do all the work of distributing the sponge mix more widely in the bed neighbourhood.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As the sponge holes sweat moisture into the surrounding soil the water merges with the fluid content emanating from the terracotta pots, thus promoting greater holding capacity and broader spread per litre of irrigation. In my sandy soils both methods ensure I keep moisture in my top soil longer rather than have it quickly drain away.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">You need to be aware that the hole's contents are initially manure 'hot' so you need to consider what you plant nearby. Heavy feeders should do alright.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I treat these holes as a shadow version of my terracotta pots. They are roughly the same volume and depth &nbsp;while serving a similar function. So when I come to fill the pots every 3-4 days, all I need do is direct my hose spay at the marked sponge holes as well...at least for the following few months. Rather than hose the garden beds -- wasting water and encouraging weed growth -- I concentrate my water usage in spots that store it underground.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In my imagination I envisage these sponge holes as a key element in my worm neighbourhood. In hot weather I discovered that garden worms will gravitate around the terracotta pots because of the coolness and moisture in the soil. These properties are replicated by the sponge holes with the added feature that they are also serve as a restaurant and takeaway.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-59105545970027861552014-07-19T19:14:00.002+10:002014-07-19T19:14:45.665+10:00To market, to market....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XR7BKk94c0s/U8onjpNMkpI/AAAAAAAAHaE/jyv3EeHW6NE/s1600/garden20140718.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XR7BKk94c0s/U8onjpNMkpI/AAAAAAAAHaE/jyv3EeHW6NE/s1600/garden20140718.jpg" height="640" width="372" /></a></div>Major renovations...<br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I've been digging...and planting because I've been driven by a new commitment: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_gardening">market gardening</a>. As I plan to do the local monthly community markets selling some of what I grow, the garden now has a entrepreneurial purpose. So it has to deliver a quotient of vegetables.&nbsp;</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">Be productive. Be predictable and reliable. Be niche oriented.</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm thinking through my 'business plan' options and as well as selling at these monthly events I may run market days from &nbsp;home on the other fortnight. People can drop by and shop.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Yesiree...I've been doing my homework. Reading up. Studying experiences of urban agriculture and micro farming,etc.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm convinced that it's do-able as various scenarios are possible...and work elsewhere.</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">Not that I plan to commit to &nbsp;a new profession at my age, but my retail savvy flags the options.</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm also thinking of offering to <i>grow-to-order </i>and <i>ring+drop-by-+-harvest</i> without taking on the responsibilities of something like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community-supported_agriculture">Community Supported Agriculture.</a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the genre of contemporary market gardening there are many retailing models.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But it's still early days and I am a hobbyist.I look to the marketing aspect as a means to network in my community and supplement my income while promoting environmental vibes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But the focus is a delight and draws me to the garden more assiduously as though I have a part time occupation. A routine.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This means that I have become more demanding of my patch.I'm asking more of it...and I expect more. &nbsp;So I got busy and remade some of the layout.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><ul><li><b>I narrowed the paths and widened the beds </b>in order to get more growing space. The soil shifting has indeed expanded my planting area. The much narrower paths are now trenches because they are dug deeper than before so that they act like valleys. Foot traffic compacts the earth and water is slower to dissipate. That's a plus for me.</li><li><b>I expanded my mounds </b>and planted them out with a mix of vegetables as well as the tubers. This is still an experiment &nbsp;but now I have 3 gardens: (1) garden beds (my original garden--number:5); (2)garden mounds (my recent experiment);and the new ground (3) mounds and ridges constructed from dirt thrown atop &nbsp;twigs and branches half way to <i>&nbsp;<a href="http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/">Hugelkultur</a> </i>mode..<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcThoBifG_z1EcVCJNI5mfvcnaqmgz1loQAwFwBIQ_AeFwj-dWu0nA" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcThoBifG_z1EcVCJNI5mfvcnaqmgz1loQAwFwBIQ_AeFwj-dWu0nA" /></a></div></li><li><b>I incorporated waffle &nbsp;grids in my planting habits.</b> <a href="http://www.zyep.org/gardening.htm">Waffle gardens were developed by the Zuni of New Mexico </a>(picture right) as a means to farm in very dry conditions. Since we are officially 'in dought' and I forever have water issues, &nbsp;I adapted the method to my own garden beds. I now sow direct into the ground by first scraping out a waffle depression. then border &nbsp;it with soil and mulch. There's no over all design grid -- not yet anyway -- but I expect I'll customise as I explore this approach further. The compartmentalisation suits me. It's also risk free as I have, afterall, <i>such sandy soils....</i></li><li><b>I mine my chook pen.</b> Since I've been creating new beds --requiring 'mounds' of dirt --I had to get my soil from somewhere. Fortunately my chook pen is large and I've always wondered how to better harvest all the inputs I feed the chickens. So I take soil from the pen and put it on the garden. My chook pen is a &nbsp;mine site. What better way to harness all that chook poo? It's sandy ++++ so it's an easy pick up and deliver. The chickens don't mind the crevices that are opening up at their feet. I'm even thinking of digging a well there.&nbsp;</li><li><b>I sift sand and cow manure together</b> before throwing it on the beds and mounds. It is not a fun task breaking up and sifting cow &nbsp;poo through a sieve, but since my 'dirt' is sterile sand I try to merge manure and sand together on a 5o:50 recipe. Besides my keeness for &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://kickbike.blogspot.com.au/search?q=honey+hole">honey holing&nbsp;</a>&nbsp;I suspect I've found a way to quicken the transition from sand to loam in situ. This approach seem more efficient than waiting on layers upon layers of mulched grass clippings to break down.I still mulch, but I now have a Plan B.</li></ul><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><br /><br />Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-55542617654709221372014-07-12T01:34:00.000+10:002014-07-12T01:34:35.107+10:00Gardening with mounds<div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">I was wondering about gardening with mounds.&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I have discussed this before relative to the growing of sweet potatoes on&nbsp;<span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: underline;"><strong style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;"><a href="http://brisbanelocalfood.ning.com/profiles/blogs/have-garden-will-travel-growing-sweet-spuds-at-home" style="color: #333333; font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_self">conical mounds as practice norm throughout Melanesia and Polynesia.</a>&nbsp;</strong></span>(See picture at right: that's' a serious mound!)</div><span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: underline;"><strong style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LOEQKwH9oMo/T136gpfdOxI/AAAAAAAALWs/_OfHzan3y2Y/s1600/Planting+vines.jpg" rel="nofollow" style="color: #333333; font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img class="align-right" height="157" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LOEQKwH9oMo/T136gpfdOxI/AAAAAAAALWs/_OfHzan3y2Y/s1600/Planting+vines.jpg" style="border: 0px none; display: inline !important; float: right !important; font-size: 1em; height: auto; margin: 5px 0px 10px 25px !important; max-width: 737px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;" width="210" /></a></strong></span><br /><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">Since then I built a series of mounds and planted them out with potatoes with the perspective that I had begun to solve my &nbsp;potato conundrum.&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">I fiddled with the setup &nbsp;and embedded a terracotta irrigator pot in the middle of each mound -- such that the mounds look like volcanoes with craters.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If you are into <a href="http://kickbike.blogspot.com.au/search/label/Terracotta%20Pot%20Irrigation">terracotta pot watering</a> as I am the pot in the middle of a built up conical earth mound is a wondering engineering solution for water spread.It's like a chicken and egg thing . Wonderfully syncronicity. The shape allows not only broader water seepage but enables &nbsp;more plants to access the irrigating core.</div><a href="http://www.permaculturenews.org/images/New-York-015.jpg" rel="nofollow" style="color: #333333; font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img class="align-left" height="171" src="http://www.permaculturenews.org/images/New-York-015.jpg?width=197" style="border: 0px none; display: inline !important; float: left !important; font-size: 1em; height: auto; margin: 5px 25px 10px 0px !important; max-width: 737px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;" width="288" /></a><br /><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">So I not only planted potatoes in the mounds but have since added Zucchini and am considering other options. Between the mounds, in the gullies, I just planted Taro.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">However, I am reminded of an earlier gardening inspiration&nbsp;<span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: underline;"><strong style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;"><a href="http://permaculturenews.org/2010/10/08/how-to-build-a-permaculture-vegetable-garden/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #333333; font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">developed by&nbsp;Tiny Eglington</a><em style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;">.</em></strong></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">It blew me away.<span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://permaculturenews.org/2010/09/20/how-to-establish-a-small-space-intensive-food-garden/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #333333; font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><strong style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;">Check out another exam</strong><strong style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;">ple of the design method here</strong></a>&nbsp;( sample picture at left)</span><span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: underline;"><strong style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;">.</strong></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">When I laid out my own garden I didn't do this because all I had was sand to work with and going up -- such as for drainage -- didn't seem to make sense.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">But that's only part of the story. Much as I tried to make Edlington's watering system work --watering the gullies rather than the beds (deploying a sort of wiking logic) -- I couldn't facilitate it.Not on sand, despite laying plastic and paper and mulch underneath the gullies.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">But now that I can water with my pots -- Voila! I have a solution.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">Of course gardening in mounds or ridges isn't new.&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;"><em style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;">HugelKulture&nbsp;</em>is a quintessential mound method (pictured right below). But I've not been able to make HugelKulture work given my conditions. I suspect that here our climate is too dry.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important;"><img class="align-right" height="134" src="http://www.permaculture.co.uk/sites/default/files/images/hugelcultur.img_assist_custom-395x215.JPG" style="border: 0px none; display: inline !important; float: right !important; font-size: 1em; height: auto; margin: 5px 0px 10px 25px !important; max-width: 737px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;" width="236" /><span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">But looking at the&nbsp;</span><span style="text-align: justify;">'mound' and reviewing the literature on HK there is a lot of&nbsp;advantages&nbsp;in mounding to that size.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;">I've thrown a lot of twigs and paper into my mounds --to give them texture and some structural core.I sifted in manures and coated the lot in a blanket of lawn clippings mulch.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;">Some are a bit like ridges, but double camel hump ridges. I call them '2 pot mounds' as distinct form the conically shaped &nbsp;'one terracotta pot' mounds.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;">I'm not certain how far down I should take the gullies. Water pooling doesn't happen here so&nbsp;excavating&nbsp;the gullies is primarily about getting dirt.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">Mine are higgledy piggledy things and when I built them it was clear that not only could I water with my fav method -- da pots -- &nbsp;but I could harness the gullies for different purposes such that I could use some, rather than for pathways, as dumps for mulch and cut scrub, newspaper and such like the banana circle option.Even if I walk over this 'rubbish' its' not a problem. As soon as it breaks down I can put it on a garden bed or use it to make another mound.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">Indeed these &nbsp;beds of mine have tended to look like the shape and size of large upturned bathtubs, mini volcanoes or an Alien egg nursery...</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">But the logic of mounds of this size -- and irrigated as I do -- impresses me.</div><ul style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important;"><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">You extend the surface area of your 'bed' by using a curved surface.&nbsp;</li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">Despite the increased size your access to all plants is enhanced because the required reach is less.</li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">You harness gravity to encourage plants -- esp ramblers like cucumber, tomatoes and such -- to fall away and down onto a surface that will tend t be drier than a flat bed.</li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">You get to also plant in the gullies, esp more water dependent plants. (Thats' the estimate, anyway).</li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">Because the mounds are elevated beds -- just like any contour you can plant according to sun requirements -- as you'll have some 'sides' more exposed to the sun than others. So you plant, say, lettuces on the south of the mound and capsicums on the north and west. If planting extensively in the gullies is an option you can use the mounds as shade and or weather protection.</li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">Like the Melanesian examples mounds are demountable. That may seem an anathema but it is easy to shift a pile of dirt than dig a hole -- or disassemble a mound and build a new one in its place. Indeed when I began this project I had in mind that the mounds would be my 'portable' garden</li></ul><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">How big can these mounds be &nbsp;given my watering methods? Does the design actually work -- at least on my sandy soils? I'm sure that mounds like this would not suit all soils, as you have to consider erosion issues. But then if you plant out you'd have a underground web on your side. So there's soil run off perhaps? All you do is spade it back up the hill.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;"><em style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;">Normally</em>, mounding like this would require a lot of precipitation. Conical mounds&nbsp;<em style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;">normally</em>&nbsp;aren't friendly to irrigation systems. But then there's&nbsp;<a href="http://kickbike.blogspot.com.au/search/label/Terracotta%20Pot%20Irrigation" rel="nofollow" style="color: #333333; font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: underline;"><strong style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;">the terracotta pots</strong></span></a><span style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important; text-decoration: underline;"><strong style="font-size: 1em; position: static !important;">,</strong></span>&nbsp;you see...and that's a game changer.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; min-height: 1em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;">Of use:</div><ul style="background-color: white; color: #5e5e5e; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 19.854555130004883px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: static !important;"><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/y4690e/y4690e09.htm" rel="nofollow" style="color: #333333; font-size: 1em; position: static !important;" target="_blank"><b>FAO discussion on using ridges</b></a></li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.fao.org/docrep/s8684e/s8684e04.htm" rel="nofollow" style="color: #333333; font-size: 1em; position: static !important;" target="_blank"><b>FAO discusion on farrows.</b></a></li><li style="font-size: 1em; line-height: inherit; list-style: square; margin: 0px 0px 0.4em 1.5em; padding: 0px; position: static !important; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.budget101.com/gardening-landscaping/adventures-mound-gardening-3434.html" rel="nofollow" style="color: #333333; font-size: 1em; position: static !important;" target="_blank"><b>Adventures in mound gardening</b></a></li></ul>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4134947739877401490.post-10973877338596142122014-07-08T00:48:00.000+10:002014-07-08T00:48:01.199+10:00Mixed vegetable gardening -- a 'cottager' perspective<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://blog.theenduringgardener.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/bangladeshi-allotment.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://blog.theenduringgardener.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/bangladeshi-allotment.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: jrhandRegular, LatoRegular, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, 'Nimbus Sans L', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18.200000762939453px; text-align: left;">Bangladeshi Allotment</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">Today I planted out 45 seedlings. Greens, root crops and Leeks.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">When you go to plant you gotta think about where you will plant the plants, right?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Since I'm upping &nbsp;the number of plants in my garden beds and seriously chasing a harvest increase, I got anxious that maybe my habits were a handicap.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Other gardens of my acquaintance are formatted by blocks and rows of sameness vegetation. These may not be true 'monoculture' but my take on 'polyculture' kind of makes me a mix-em-up radical. You could say that my garden beds are &nbsp;heterogeneous mixes of plants seemingly thrown together.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And it's true -- if I see a vacancy -- like a parking space -- I'll plant/park a seedling or seed there.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm not stupid -- I don't plant the same thing there year in year out -- but a regular and set regime of rotating crops isn't in my CV. I may change the plant grown in one spot, but that's about the extent of my sequencing.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A bad habit?&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So far so good.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This habit of mine began a few decades back when my parents moved to Rosebud Victoria in cooee of <a href="http://www.diggers.com.au/"><b>Heronswood and Diggers Seeds</b></a> and thereon both my parents and I have been cottage garden aficionados as Diggers were cottager obsessed. I'd get all my seeds there and a lot of my inspiration.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Later the Permaculture bug kicked in -- and while Permaculture isn't a monocultural system, it's polycultural design is ruled by the 'food forest' concept and reliant on perennials.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Over the years I've found <i>food foresting</i> has hairs on it and it's been a task to wean myself from some Permaculture precepts I'd adopted.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm not really &nbsp;great perennial sort of guy. My stomach is ruled by annuals.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But there I was looking at the soil at my feet, seedlings in hand...and I had sudden doubts. Maybe squeezing in this and that where I can fit it in isn't the best gardening option?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I was thinking that maybe I should redesign the whole shebang...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After investing in some research I feel much better because I <a href="http://www.permaculture.org.uk/sites/default/files/page/document/MixedVegGarden_A4_colourbooklet.pdf">won an affirmation</a> :</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">In a conventional vegetable garden, each type is planted in rows or patches. Usually similar species are grouped together, such as brassicas, beans and peas and so on. Plants of the same or similar species compete for the same nutrients, and are an attractive habitat for pests of that plant. Usually, the patches are rotated every year to prevent the build-up of pests and diseases and so as not to deplete the soil of nutrients.<br />By contrast, in mixed cropping a large number of different vegetables are grown together in the same space. A well-chosen combination can result in less competition for nutrients, and other beneficial relationships between the different plants mean that plants are healthier.</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Indeed <b><a href="http://www.permaculture.org.uk/sites/default/files/page/document/MixedVegGarden_A4_colourbooklet.pdf">a little brochure</a></b> from UK Permaculture <a href="http://www.permaculture.org.uk/mixedveg">on Mixed Veg Gardening </a>is a gem and is worth downloading. It's free.</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;"><b>Mixed vegetable gardening</b> is an example of a &nbsp;polyculture . The word means<br />growing lots of different types of plants together. The growing mix in a&nbsp;polyculture can include vegetables, herbs, flowers and even fruit. People have used&nbsp;this approach all over the world for hundreds of years, often with great success. Examples include the English Cottage Garden, Caribbean kitchen gardens or the allotments of Bangladeshi communities in London.</blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;">Of course gardening in a medley is a headache. Finding plants isn't always easy. It's more time consuming to garden. The only logic is your own eccentricities...and maybe a bit of companion planting. You have to think about finished growth height and competitors in the neighbourhood after the same nutrients and moisture. You have to think about the underneath business too -- what the veg roots will get up to and where.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A bit of a mess really if your were a formalist.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In my mix --hidden among all that veg and green -- are my terracotta pot irrigators, so the more jungle there is, the harder it is to find, reach and refill these pots.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nonetheless, you're relating big time almost to every plant.You're monitoring growth and habit in close proximity to the dirt.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But if you want to lazy garden...forget it. Compared to the 'food forest' concept and &nbsp;block or row &nbsp;planting, mixed vegetable gardening demands at lot of attention....but there are <a href="http://www.permaculture.org.uk/sites/default/files/page/MixedVegGarden_A5_colourbooklet.pdf">some great advantages</a>:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><ul><li>Better use of space - a lot of food is produced and many types of vegetables can be grown in the same space over a longer time.</li><li>Fewer pests and diseases - the different colours, shapes, textures and scents of the leaves confuse pests, and diseases can't spread as easily from one plant to the next.</li><li>Less weeding - there is no space and no light on the ground, so weeds can't germinate.</li><li>Less need for watering - greater soil coverage means less evaporation.</li></ul><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">So despite the frustrations it's an effective way to deploy dirt.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In my mix &nbsp;the trees I grow are pawpaws and sweetleaf (Katuk) as they are both short lived and so easily governed. I also have many frangipanis strategically planted as a source for controlled Summer shade (and Winter light since they're deciduous here)...but for the rest, I guess I'm still learning, especially as my soil has only recently become a workable loam.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But for now, let;s just say that my moment of doubt is over and I remain a (sub-tropical) cottager at heart..</div>Dave Rileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05319742357589026156noreply@blogger.com0